Who breeds their own feeders

GreenChameleons

GreenChameleons

Established Member
Crickets
Dubia roaches
Hornworms/hawk moths
Black soldier lava/flies
Blue bottle flies
House flies
Fruit flies
Silk worms
Etc.
 
Only having 1 chameleon at a time makes breeding almost not worth it for me. I order silk eggs and BSF larvae and will order the crix and horns.
 
Decadancin said:
Only having 1 chameleon at a time makes breeding almost not worth it for me. I order silk eggs and BSF larvae and will order the crix and horns.
Click to expand...
For me it totally worth it with all the Gecko species and Chameleons. I don’t do so well with breeding fruit flies or crickets. Dubia roaches I’m good with though
 
Dubia roaches, red runner roaches, tropical springtails, powder blue isopods; I buy hornworms, silkworms, butterworms, superworms, bsfl, and crickets. Looking towards breeding all but butterworms in the future and getting more types of feeders, too, though!
 
JacksJill said:
It's not on your list but I've had some success breeding supers. I've bred crickets in the past.
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I’ve read that organic vermiculite is good to put on the bottom of the container for crickets I have some reptile bark right now because I’m using the organic vermiculite for eggs incubation. I’m using peat moss for the crickets to lay eggs in a small moist container. Was thinking about using organic sponges for water source. Water crystals is what I’m using for water bee pollen vitamin mix apple and arugula for gutload.
I heard super worms were easy to breed is that true? What hurts my fruit fly population is not having enough straw to replace and I don’t really know the recipe for the food. People use so many methods I don’t know what to use.
 
Breeding superworms is as much of an accomplishment as breeding rabbits. I house them in a three drawer bin with aluminum screen as the bottom of the top drawer with the adults in it. The other drawers catch the larvae as they fall thru.
When I bred the crickets I used an organic soil sand mix not unlike the lay bin combo and kept it damp. I put it in shallow trays sealed with window screen. Crickets will eat the eggs but the screen allows the females to lay and protects the eggs. Then I moved the trays to their own container to hatch and grow.
 
If you are not into enjoying the process of raising your own feeders, and you are doing it primarily to save money, it is not worth it financially unless you have LOTS of animals that can eat the stock. Also you will deal with the the time spent raising feeders, food for the feeders, smell of the feeders....Lindasgonebuggie.com is a great place to get smaller amounts of lots of feeders at a competitive price.

CHEERS!

Nick
 
I'll be honest and I'm not sure if I'm doing something wrong. But I'm spending more time doing feeder maintenance than actually spending time with my chameleons right now. I have 5 panthers which I spend about 30 minutes observing and cleaning their cages daily. But I spend about 1 hour minimum on my dubias, silkies, crickets, super worms and BSFL. I really want to narrow the scope of my feeders to a couple.
The feeder I hate most are the crickets..... but my chams seem to like them the most.
I will continue the BSFL since they are relatively easy to grow to flies.
I'm looking to drop super worms although they seem to be the easiest to maintain and feed.
I'm still on the fence with the silkies.
I'm probably going to ditch the roaches - my chams only resort to them if they are really hungry. If they get loose from the cups, they hide like crazy inside their enclosures to the point neither I or the panthers can find them.
 
nick barta said:
If you are not into enjoying the process of raising your own feeders, and you are doing it primarily to save money, it is not worth it financially unless you have LOTS of animals that can eat the stock. Also you will deal with the the time spent raising feeders, food for the feeders, smell of the feeders....Lindasgonebuggie.com is a great place to get smaller amounts of lots of feeders at a competitive price.

CHEERS!

Nick
Click to expand...

I was going to say the same, got to find feeders that you like if the weren't feeders. Once you begin seeing feeders themselves as a cool pet, then breeding feeders becomes easier.
 
44937- I don't do crickets because they are labor intensive. I do almost nothing for my roaches but if they weren't getting eaten theirs no point. You could switch to a 10 gallon aquarium of dubias so it would be virtually no work and still keep variety. You also could switch to orange head roaches. Chams tend to like them better. Roaches really don't require much cleaning either. I think most people over do it. I never raised silkies but the eggs are pretty cheap. You could eliminate the adult stage by buying eggs.
 
I breed a lot of different insects over the course of a year but I don't always keep them all going at all times. The most useful insect for me to breed is turning out to be the red runners. Very useful for so many sizes of lizards and they take up less space than crickets since the entire lifecycle can be completed in a single bin and it doesn't require any kind of thought or planning.
 
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