Breeding Crickets for Pacs?

[SiNi5T3R]

how hard is it to start a cricket colony? I read you use soil and mist it down every day, pick out the dead ones so it wont smell, feed them fruits and veggies or something like that. Anyone breed there own crickets and have any tips? I think I may start a colony soon so that way i dont have to spend loads of cash going to town every other day to buy 3$ worth of crickets lol

[John]

Have you seen this? Frog Forum - Culturing Crickets - Care and Breeding of the Common House Cricket

[guppygal]

I tried breeding crickets for my darts once, hoping to catch pinheads before they got to big. I guess I just wasn't vigilant enough - I ended up with a very smelly mess of rapidly multiplying crickets and no way to pull the pinheads. I'm sure it's easier for folks who own frogs that eat the larger bugs, tho -

[bshmerlie]

If breeding doesn't work out for you there are several companies online that sell crickets by the thousand. They are a fraction of the cost than buying them from a retail store.

[Kevin1]

There's a new cricket species being offered out there commercially, Gryllus assimilis, the Jamaican field cricket. This species is great for home breeding. I, like many others, have had a hard time trying to breed crickets on a regular basis. This species is very easy to breed. They just don't seem to die. lol With the cricket virus going around I guess a new species was the answer for many cricket farms. Really though you can find this species online or in my case at your local pet store. They get bigger, are way more productive, hard to kill, and make very little noise. I use a different method than most for breeding crickets. I live in the desert where it's very dry and need a large substrate mass to stay moist for any length of time.

[DVirginiana]

Breeding most types of crickets is a pain. I'd recommend dubia roaches. They don't make noise, smell, or cannibalize. Also, if you purchase a starter colony you should constantly have roaches and nymphs of all sizes to choose from for your frog.

A really good cricket setup involves several large containers that you rotate depending on the age of the crickets. In the container with the adult crickets, you put a moist dish of soil for egg laying. Then you take that out and put it in a container with very small crickets once they start to hatch out. You can find how-to sheets for it on google fairly easily.