Culturing Crickets - Care and Breeding of the Common House Cricket

[Paul Rust]

Thank you charlamanda, I'm glad it inspired you. It really is easy to do.

[wesleybrouwer]

Another great article !
Thumbs up
I think crickets are one of the best food sources around and highly underestimated.

The most important thing in the recipe is protein, lots and lots of protein.
This is what crickets like best.
When you give to little of this, they will start eating eacother because a cricket is full of proteins itself.
The more proteins available, the more they breed.
When proteins get abudant, they start eating eachother in order to get it.
Clever mechanism of nature

About the sound,
i must say i stopped feeding the domestic crickets for various reasons.

-They do make a irritating sound, at least for me they do.
-And i heard more then once they started to dine on the animals they are food for when they are asleep. Glad i never witnessed it myself, but i saw pictures, and it isn't looking nice i can tell
My guess is that such an animal is already weakend, but just to be better safe then sorry
-Domestic crickets can last inside you're house and even breed when escaped,

Therefore my choice of cricket is the steppe cricket(Gryllus assimilis) oten recalled to as the brown field cricket.

The benefits in my opinion are:

-They are less aggresive then the domestic cricket, banded cricket or black field cricket
-Makes the softest chirp of all the species named.(wich in my case is most important)
-Don't become a plague as often due to their higher temperature needs to breed and even survive.
-Are slower and less jumpier then most, certainly less then the "normal" domestic ones
-Contain more meat since they become a little bigger and rounder as the other species(except the black one but those ruin this benefit by their sound)
-Research in Germany showed they contain the most nutritions of all species and in a better balance.


Downside is they breed not as fast since they got a relative long lifecycle.
They reach maturaty later then the domestic cricket.

Breeding goes trough the same principals as what is already mentioned for the "normal" crickets.
As i mentioned they like it warm.
Around 30 degrees Celcius (86 Fahrenheit) or a little higher will do great.
Eggs will have the best hatching rate at 30 degrees Celcius.

Note that they need water available at all times, they can't do without as long as the domestic ones can.

A nice tip for the other ones out there, getting nuts of a breeding group of males.
Try to sift out the males and keep a couple of them with more females then they can handle.
Doing so, they won't take the time to chirp since they are way to busy
That's no joke, it realy helps a lot.

[Paul Rust]

Thank you Wesley.

I love the narrative you gave us, you have my interest in Brown Field Crickets up. I will research and try a colony, I'm always looking for a new project

[Greenlove]

Can I use the calcium supplement Repcal with D3 instead of the powdered milk? I have 5 jars of the stuff that I got from a friend that doesn't have reptiles anymore. I would like to use it up before it expires. If this is ok, what would be the ratio of cat food to calcium supplement to vitamins? If you think the milk is better, that's ok I don't mind using it, just please tell me which ones best. Thank you for your time. Oh, and I'm using Purina cat chow, is that ok?

[Paul Rust]

Can I use the calcium supplement Repcal with D3 instead of the powdered milk? I have 5 jars of the stuff that I got from a friend that doesn't have reptiles anymore. I would like to use it up before it expires. If this is ok, what would be the ratio of cat food to calcium supplement to vitamins? If you think the milk is better, that's ok I don't mind using it, just please tell me which ones best. Thank you for your time. Oh, and I'm using Purina cat chow, is that ok?

I see no reason not to use the Rep-Cal other than cost.
Any cat food is good, it's the high protien content that you want.

[Greenlove]

Can you please tell me the ratio to cat food to calcium supplement to Herptivite. Would it still be the half a blender of cat food, 10% Repcal, 1% Herptivite?

[Paul Rust]

I wouldn't change the ratio at all, in fact I have a surplus of Rep-Cal as well and am going to use it in the next batch and see how it goes. As long as the crickets survive on it, I don't care how much they get.

[Snapdragon]

Just wanted to add for anyone who is wondering where to get a lot of egg cartons, that I can go to a restaurant where I live and if I ask for egg cartons, they will give me a huge stack for free, of the big square kind. I think it's because they serve breakfast all day that they end up with so many. Maybe other people who are looking for cartons could try one of their own local all-day breakfast or other restaurants. Thanks for the article, and good luck to everyone starting it.

[Paul Rust]

This is a great suggestion Jim, thank you for your input.

[Paul Rust]

I did some updating on this article.

[JSG]

Guys, I've read both the fruit fly and the cricket culturing articles and both of these are greatly informative. Just one thing though, and I have even tried the Forum's FAQ search thingy....what the heck are Spring tails?

[John]

Springtails are insect-like organisms that feed mainly on fungi in soil and decaying organic matter. They are tiny harmless organisms that make great food for very tiny young frogs.

[KittenRD]

Has anyone tried using plastic egg flats?

[John]

The problem with that is that the crickets can't grip them well.

Has anyone tried using plastic egg flats?

[KittenRD]

The problem with that is that the crickets can't grip them well.

Thanks John! Good point!

[nicodimus22]

I'm sure this guide is very useful and economical to people that have a large collection of insectivores and want to hatch 1000+ crickets a week.

For people with a more modest collection, say 1-3 frogs or toads, is it worth culturing crickets or is it easier to just buy them regularly in a local shop or through the mail? Thanks.

[John]

It's actually not expensive to culture them once you have the initial materials, so whether you have 1 or 100 frogs is not as much the issue. The main issue is time, energy, and odor tolerance (crickets aren't very pleasant to smell, unless you clean them out almost daily). If you've only got 1 frog, I would buy them at the local store.

[Guenhwyvar]

I used reptomin and tadpole pellets and ground them up with a mortar and pestle. The crickets seem to like it. My problem is getting them to drink water. The mixture has calcium and vit c from the reptomin. Is vit c as important or more important than D3? Are either required by frogs?