How I breed crickets

[Psychobunny]

Well here is my method.
These are the brown banded cricks I am breeding.

Pic 1: my bug/ cham hospital table.
Pic 2: a square Tupperware sandwich box, about 1 1/2'' deep
Pic 3: cut piece of screen to fit over the sandwich box, like a lid.
Pic 4: place screen over box
Pic 5: place moist box with screen (I use EcoEarth) into the adult crick bin.
Pic 6: keep lay box in bin for a week, mist once a day to keep moist. Remove from adult bin, and place lay box in a secondary container.
Pic 7: Place lay bin and secondary container in incubator set to 80F (the hatchling will climb out of the lay box). You will see tiny white eggs in about 12 days, and cricks will hatch in about 15 days. Mist lightly daily.
Pic 8: hatchlings will climb onto the secondary container. Remove lay bin, and dump them into a baby bin as shown.

If you do not cover the lay bin with screen (make sure mesh is not too small), you will not get nearly as many hatchlings, as the adults tend to eat the eggs.

They will hatch over a period of several days.
Check the incubator daily, you will find the bottom of the secondary container covered with pinheads.
Keep dumping them into your baby bin every day, until you see no more hatching.
There are several thousand pinheads from just this one lay bin.

I feed them cricket crack and small slices of bug burger.

Temp is very important, I have both babies and adults on heating mats set to 80F. Cricks will not lay if they are cold.

 

[Psychobunny]

Continued from first post.
Here are the last 4 pics:

 

[renderit1]

Wow, this is awesome and right on time. Started looking at how to do this now that Ive finally had it with buying them. Did you get it right a way or was it a trial and error?

 

[Psychobunny]

It took me several tries to get it right.

Lots of frustration, and no baby crickets!!

It wasn't until I started covering the lay bin with screen, and put a heating mat under the tank, did I finally get hatchling every time.

When I wasn't covering the lay bin, I could only leave it in the adult tub a few
days, or they would eat the eggs.
Sometimes, I would get a few hundred hatchling, but most of the time, nothing!!

With this method, I get a few thousand hatchlings, every time.
All from one little sandwich container

 

[Psychobunny]

Oh, you don't really need an incubator, I just happen to have one.
You can just place your lay bin and it's container in any place that stays
warm, like a closet or something.
Just remember not to let it dry out.

 

[APBMM veil charm]

Great info . I only have one cham but you make that look pretty easy .

 

[Psychobunny]

The hard part is rotation, so you always have the right feeder size.
Pins take a long time to reach a good size.
So until I can figure out a schedule (will need more room, and more bins!!),
I still have to buy cricks while I wait for the pins to grow up

 

[NHenn]

Stan, Thanks for the information.

I've been fooling around with breeding crickets for the past few months as well. My problem isn't really getting them to hatch but more keeping them alive. I will end up with a ton of pin heads but by week 2-3 after they hatch I swear I have maybe 100 left that are still alive. I never see any escape but there isn't that many dead ones in the container either so I don't know where they go or what happens to them lol.

Also, they usually take a good month to hatch so I wonder if my temperatures are not high enough to get the two weeks turn around like you have. What do you give the pinheads for water?

 

[sibo]

this may sound like a real daft question, do the cricks just lay through the mesh?? or did i miss something, looks like a wicked idea, kicks the backside out of my method lol.

 

[NHenn]

this may sound like a real daft question, do the cricks just lay through the mesh?? or did i miss something, looks like a wicked idea, kicks the backside out of my method lol.

Yep, the mesh is large enough for the females to lay through it but small enough the others cant go and eat the eggs out of the dirt.

 

[Psychobunny]

Stan, Thanks for the information.

I've been fooling around with breeding crickets for the past few months as well. My problem isn't really getting them to hatch but more keeping them alive. I will end up with a ton of pin heads but by week 2-3 after they hatch I swear I have maybe 100 left that are still alive. I never see any escape but there isn't that many dead ones in the container either so I don't know where they go or what happens to them lol.

Also, they usually take a good month to hatch so I wonder if my temperatures are not high enough to get the two weeks turn around like you have. What do you give the pinheads for water?

I don't give them water, the bug burger is enough.
I also give the baby bin a few sprays from my mist bottle every day.

You also need to keep the pins warm, or they will die.

My house is on the cool side, upper 60's, I found the best way to heat the crick bins is from the bottom, up!
So I use terrarium 'under tank' heaters, on a in-line lamp dimmer.
I adjust it until it's about 80'ish.

My favorite under tank heater (by far!!) is the UltraTherm, sold only by Bean Farm. They are almost paper thin, have no "sticky" side, and have a circuit that adjusts the temp according to the room temp.
So is the room is 90F, the mat will not go above that temp, but if the room is cold, the mat will adjust it's self higher.
They also last for years!! I have a bunch of them, different sizes, and not expensive (and no, I don't work for Bean Farm )

Oh, they shouldn't take that long to hatch, I keep a log of everything, and the longest it took was 18 days (at 80F incubation).
I have not experimented with increasing the temp to see if they will hatch sooner.

Also, they do not all hatch on the same day. On day one, you may only see a few tiny pins crawling around in the soil.
But the next day, your container will be covered with them.
You need to dump these new hatchlings out of the container, and into a baby bin every day (I have 2 of those plastic
containers, so I can swap them)

 

[Psychobunny]

this may sound like a real daft question, do the cricks just lay through the mesh?? or did i miss something, looks like a wicked idea, kicks the backside out of my method lol.

Yep, the females have to problem getting their little egg tubes threw it

Keeping the soil moist is important too, they seem to be attracted to it.
I see the lay bin is almost always covered with adult females (some males too)

 

[happiness]

I had about 50 adult crickets in a bin with a screen over top (They kept getting under the screen! Going to do it your way next time with the screen folded over the container instead of sitting inside it ) Anywho, eventually I saw eggs but then I began to see mold in the egg bin. So I would scoop it out and come back maybe two days later to see more mold!! Then the soil dried out and most of the adults were dead.

So how can I keep the soil moist without producing mold?

 

[Psychobunny]

I used to put a lid on my crick tub, but then realized it was not needed.
As long as your tub has tall, smooth walls, they will not get out.

Just dont stack the egg flats to high, or they can jump out.

The brown banded cricks I get from Ghann's are super power jumpers, they jump higher then any other species I have used.