Quote Originally Posted by Kurt View Post
I read about this in Reptiles some time ago and I still believe what people are thinking is a virus is actually poor husbandry pratices.
I think there really is a densovirus which is decimating commercial cricket farms. Poor husbandry would not seem to be a factor in a commercial operation which is the bread and butter of the owners.

Ii had an odd thing happen with my crickets; during early spring I forgot to hold back any breeders, so had to go out and buy some crickets at a petstore for breeding. Those crickets did not do too great, producing only one decent hatch in April, and that hatch subsequently began slowly dying off when they got to slightly over half grown to almost full grown. I wound up feeding out this entire hatch to my toads mainly to get rid of it. My own crickets have matured and are breeding gangbusters, and the adults are not dying. So this was something affecting just that batch I had to buy. I am not going to buy any more crickets from anywhere outside. I think I dodged a bullet on this thing!

I have a robust colony of gryllus black field crickets as well. I am also considering growing Turkestan Roaches - Blatta lateralis. That way I wont have all my eggs in one basket! Currently the only other thing I have to feed my toads is pinkies, and they only get those as a special treat. Catching bugs is too much work to feed my big knot of toads. One year I did catch grasshoppers for my fence lizards, but having to hunt every day for the grasshoppers took so long that is why I got into growing my own crickets.