- Common brown house crickets, the only species raised commercially in this country, are accustomed to dense living conditions. Their wild counterparts, black crickets, are intensely territorial and not suitable for rearing in captivity.
I am wanderings what species of black crickets they are talking about. I have black field crickets Gryllus from the Sierra Foothills and they do fine in captivity, although they don't produce the huge mega hatches I get with the acheta domestica. Still, though, they are worthwhile to raise and have the same husbandry as the brown acheta. The pinheads hatch out a tad bigger than the brown pinheads, and they live a long time, and will breed all year round if kept warm. There are many types of black crickets, and some may well be not suitable for domestic production, but I think the type I have would work out fine. I am keeping my black cricket colony going just in case something should happen to my brown ones, God Forbid!