I have been trying to raise a few crickets this year to cut my expenses on feeding my reptiles. I have great luck getting them to hatch but always seem to loose ALLOT first few weeks.
I have been misting them this time and not just depending on the potatoes for their water and this has helped I believe.
My question is when you go to a site and to order they show 1 week, 2 week , etc, etc up to 6 weeks which they call adult. Mine will not grow near that fast and any advice on this would be very helpful.
Another thing is I hatch a bunch when I hatch. I put a container of dirt in with 1000 adults for 2 days . I would hate to gues how many I hatch at a time but as you all know 1000 pinheads looks like NOTHING and when I look in my plastic tubs at them there is a BUNCH ....
Thanks
V.J. Harelson
Basking Dragons
417-876-2482
Basking Dragons
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Need advice on cricket growth rate
Replies (1)
Howdy. This is a rather late reply, but hopefully still useful nonetheless. I keep and raise crickets--both the regular 'pet store' house cricket and wild field and ground crickets--and find the most important aspects to get good fast growth on the babies is lots of heat (85 to 90 F is ideal), a safe source of always available water, enough space for the little ones to be able to relax and rest separate from one another without being constantly jostled or hassled, and a nuitritious diet that includes a lot of protein (fish flakes, dry cat food, trout pellets, etc). Give them all this and you'll observe that they'll do very little except eat, drink, bask in the heat, eat, drink, and bask some more, and occasionally molt and grow like weeds...some 16-day-old black field crickets (Gryllus pennsylvanicus) I'm raising right now are already pushing half an inch, for example. I find it also helps to separate big batches of babies into groups of 100-200 if you want to cut losses to an absolute minimum. The smaller populations don't seem to feel the need to compete as vigorously and can more easily hide from one another when molting, the stage when they can most easily prey on and injure each other.
