Reptile & Amphibian Forums

My beardies are eating ALOT of crickets and I and I am tired of going to the store every other day! LOL I have a question for you guys. How do you keep your crickets and where do you buy them from? How to you capture them to put them in the cages?? I know alot of questions. Sorry. Thanks for your respones in advanced.
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Cheryl

you could buy a box of 1000 on the web and store them in a large rubbermaid box. I have made many before....all you really need to do is cut a large hole in the top and fill it in with wire mesh. The thing is, you have to clean it often or it begins to smell pretty bad.

Over the years i have become and expert cricket catcher...LOL. i can reach into a pile of crickets and pick it up by its hind leg with both hands at the same time....something i learned while hand feeding dragons.

Suggestion: do not hand feed dragons all the time, or you will end up doing it the rest of their lives.

when i throw a handful in the cage, i just reach in the box and grab a bunch at one time.
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a free range dragon is a happy dragon

buy in bulk from any of the online cricket/feeder supply stores available. store crickets in a large rubbermaid container, as already suggested. put in alot of egg cartons, torn up into two or four egg sections each. you can get big egg flats from most cafeterias, just find one close to you, such as one at work or school, and ask if they can keep the cartons or flats they get their eggs in for you. once you have about twenty, you are pretty good for awhile.

feed crickets either commercial gut load, or the same mix of greens, vegetables and fruit you would feed your bearded dragons. for moisture, a slice of orange, potato, squash or carrots work. change food for crickets daily. fish flakes or crushed dry dog or cat food works as well.

you can also set up a second rubbermaid bin for your crickets, and dump what you have left into it, then wash the first one and rotate this way between them, this way you don' thave to find someplace to put what crickets are left. or, every time you order a 1000 crickets or so, you can put the new order into the clean empty rubbermaid container, and when the last batch of crickets is all used up, you can clean up the bin and have it ready for your next order of crickets. t his makes cleaning them easier and less chance of escaped crickets in the house.

to catch crickets, what i always did, was use a sandwich sized ziplock bag, hold it open in the cricket bin and take a section of egg carton, and empty any crickets in the carton into the ziplock bag. also, before adding crickets, if this is the feeding that will be dusted with calcium and multivitamin powders, i would put a bit into the bag first, then add the crickets. this makes it easier to dust the crickets.

to feed the dragon i would dump the crickets either one by one into the cage for the dragon to catch and eat, or dump into a cermamic flat bottomed bowl for my dragon to eat.

another little tip, when ordering in bulk, order a size smaller than the maximum size your dragon can eat [ie the space between the dragon's eyes]. if a 1000 crickets is too much, order just in groups of 500, depending on how much your dragon eats and his age. as adult dragons don't need to eat insects as much as young dragons, buying a 100 crickets locally every couple of weeks may work better than buying 500, as once the crickets are adults, they do not live very long.
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PHLdyPayne

yeah i agree....the most important thing to do if you are keeping a bunch of crickets is to keep slices of orange in the container. Not too many, just as much as they eat/drink or you may get a mold problem. It'll keep most of the crix from dying, and that is where the smell comes from...which is the ammonia release from decomposing crickets.

good info...when i've done internet orders of crickets, i have usually gotten them at a smaller size then the size i ordered. If you call them before you place the order, they can tell you what the sizes are. You see the company is more concerned with giving you the crickets in a timely manner, so they don't want to wait three weeks for the crickets to get to the right size.
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a free range dragon is a happy dragon

The care offered here is great. We purchase our crickets from Grubco (grubco.com). The quality and count has always been great. Keep them alive and you won't have much smell. Good luck!
J. Marchon Reptiles