CITIZEN OF LANCONIA (New Hampshire) 16 December 07 'Crazy' cricket farmer taps into growing industry (Gail Ober)
Despite the name of his new company — Crazy Carl's Cricket Farm — Carl Jenkins isn't crazy at all.
In fact, Jenkins has tapped into one of the faster growing specialty industries in the country — cultivating crickets for reptile food — and on Wednesday celebrated the opening of his farm in the Franklin Business Center.
In early 2007, the Humane Society estimated there are 11 million reptiles kept as pets in the United States alone, each of them requiring a specific diet of which live crickets is a staple. Jenkins' more recent research indicates nearly 4.5 million U.S. families own 14 million pet reptiles.
Jenkins, who worked for 23 years as a shipping and inventory specialist at General Electric, said he began growing crickets almost out of necessity.
"I had a Chinese water dragon that ate 100 crickets at a sitting," he said. "I spent half my life trying to either catch them in the wild or trying to find them in pet stores."
He said he was spending 10 to 15 cents apiece for crickets at pet stores until he was able to buy them online. When his best friend told him he would back him in a business venture if he created a solid business plan, Jenkins said he immediately thought of crickets.
"I don't think he thought it would be this original," said Jenkins to the nearly 30 friends, family, and supporters at his ribbon-cutting ceremony.
Entering Jenkins' farm is like entering a warm August night. The temperature is a steady 75 degrees — 85 degrees in the hatchery — and the only sounds other than those made by humans are melodious chirpings.
The hatchery has 24 breeder bins — bins where eggs are placed in ground up coconut husk beds. He keeps about 250 crickets as breeders and said each female will lay up to 600 eggs in her lifetime. The hatchery yields 3,000 to 4,000 crickets every three days.
To grow from larva to baby crickets — called pinheads — in about three days, said Jenkins, and pinheads can be sold as food for baby reptiles.
Those that aren't sold move out of the hatchery to the growing floor — a room with rows of blue plastic containers stacked to the ceiling, each with growing crickets.
Jenkins said he uses the "slow-grow" method of cricket growing, and it takes 8-10 weeks for a pinhead to reach maturity. He said many of the largest cricket farms are in the Southern U.S. There, he said, crickets mature in about two-thirds the time that it takes in this area.
"We're really the microbrewery of crickets," he said.
Jenkins started growing crickets in his condominium. "I made my son move out because I needed his bedroom for the space," he said, adding he still only had room for about five colonies.
Despite the naysayers, including one of his clients at a pet store in Maine who told him he'd never be able to grow crickets in New England, Jenkins persevered. "Well now I've got a million crickets that says I can," he said.
Since opening, he says he's picked up about 85 regular customers and is adding four to five more to his customer base daily. Now, he hears regularly from New England pet stores and private purchasers that they like the idea of being able to buy "locally grown" crickets.
"New Englanders want to spend their money in New England," he said.
Jenkins said his dream is to operate a very large cricket farm. He has also started a new line of meal worms, and he's experimenting with cricket-powered plant food.
While Jenkins said he is not ready to venture into the crickets-for-human consumption market — flavored crickets are a delicacy in many Eastern countries — he did order some bacon-and-cheese flavored ones for the grand opening.
"I think there's too many regulations," said his wife, Kathleen, referring to human-consumption crickets.
For now, the Jenkins are content with growing a top brand of cricket for the reptile lovers of the country and for keeping their own two turtles, Mortimer, a Chinese three-toed box turtle, and Boris, a vegetarian Russian tortoise, well fed.
"I have quite the menagerie — two dogs, two cats, one parrot, two turtles and 1 million crickets," he said.
For more information about Crazy Carl's Cricket Farm go to www.cccricketfarm.com or call 934-6800.
'Crazy' cricket farmer taps into growing industry

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