Raising Crickets For Pets Or Pet Food

The sound of crickets chirping can be very annoying to some people while its music to other people. However if you buy live crickets to feed your lizards or tortoise's you'll find that they can be quite expensive. So what I suggest you do is raise your own crickets and you will find yourself saving money. If you like to fish you can also use live crickets for bait for pan fish.

The brown cricket is the most common cricket raised in the United States. You can go to a pet store and purchase crickets to start raising your own crickets with. In case you're wondering its the male cricket that makes the singing sound. He does it to ward off other male crickets and to attract female crickets. Its always best to have 4 - 5 male crickets in your cricket enclosure and a good many female crickets. The female brown cricket looks like it has a stinger. But it does not. The stinger looking thing is how they lay their eggs.

Crickets will escape easily so you need an escape proof cricket house that your crickets can not get out of. You can buy a ready made cricket house or you can build a large wooden box with a screen wire lid for holding your breeding colony of crickets.

You will want to put shredded newspaper in the bottom of your cricket enclosure and you'll want a few tree branches inside to give them something to climb on. You will want to provide the crickets with a few peat moss filled containers to lay their eggs in. The females will lay their eggs and when your sure the peat moss contains eggs you can move the peat moss containers with eggs to a new cage where the baby crickets will hatch out and grow. You will want to provide a 40 watt light bulb in the top of your cricket cages to warm your crickets. Set your lights on a timer so they will come on at 6 P.M. and go off at 6 A.M. If you do this you'll find you have happy crickets.

In no time at all you can have a huge breeding colony of crickets and be raising plenty of new crickets to produce more crickets for breeding and for food for your lizards and tortoises. I always sprinkle my crickets with a calcium supplement before I feed them to my lizards and tortoises.

Chicken laying mash is an excellent food for crickets and every once in a while you should provide them with greens like turnip greens or collard greens. Just be sure to wash the greens thoroughly with cold running water before you feed the greens to your crickets. You can use fresh potatoes cut in half to give your crickets a water source or soak cotton balls with water and put them in the cricket enclosure.

Did you know that the warmer crickets are the faster they will chirp. And if you choose to raise your own crickets to feed your lizards and tortoises you'll find yourself saving money and anytime you can save money is a wonderful time. Plus you'll have the fun of raising your own crickets. If you have comments or questions please feel free to post them below now and thanks for reading my Hub Page on Crickets.