Finally deciding to breed crickets. Help?

[SilverWolf]

My father said just on the bearded dragon alone it is 70 dollars a month for all of the crickets. We just cannot do that, in addition with my chameleon. Now my father was telling me he did a lot of research and knows how to breed them efficiently, but we just need to get another enclosure for the crickets and small plastic container for the eggs. Anyway my father is the one who is mainly in charge of making all of those preparations but, since I have a chameleon with specific nutritional requirements, I need to tell him how I want their food to be. But I want everyone else's opinions too. Here is my plan for feeding the crickets, so give me any feed back you can please. The ingredients were giving to me by Lathis although, Lathis was not aware I was intending to breed them as far as I know.


I am going to bled the following ingredients:

Butternut squash (cutting off the rind)
Apple slices
green/bell peppers
collard greens
carrots

After blending I'm going to put it into iced trays, freeze it and then I'll have my frozen nutritional gut loading cubes. I will put one or two in the enclosures a day. My only concern now is the cubes melting. If I put the cubes in a small dish, after it melts will the crickets still go for it and get all the same nutrients?

 

[Psychobunny]

Your post gives impression you are more concerned with proper gut loading then breeding?
But what you listed sounds good, I would add a dry food also, like cricket crack, bug buffett, etc.
I also suppliment with Repashy's Bug Burger, since it has everything in it.

 

[Lazy Boy]

I did have a few smaller crickets drown when I did the blend and freeze. I just throw some Vegs/fruits in every other day and a good dry gut load (I use bug buffet) of course some water crystals.

 

[MelissaB]

How or where are you buying your crickets? Are you buying a couple dozen at a time from the pet store? If you are, it might save you some money to order them in a larger quantity. The mom and pop pet/feed store in my small town sells them for $22 for 1000. I did have to ask them to order me my own case of crickets when they get their order in, but they were happy to do it.
If your dragon eats bigger crickets than your chameleon, you could buy 1/4 inch crickets and grow them out.