How to Raise Crickets

Are you starting to get tired of having to go to the pet store to buy crickets every week to feed your scaly, hairy and squishy little buddies? If you’re a do-it-yourself person, you might be interested in raising your own crickets. You will have a stable supply of crickets without spending money at home, so convenient, right?

Table of Contents

Prepare

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Buy multiple crates or large boxes. You will need to keep crickets in crates or boxes. The easiest way is to use two boxes, one for growing adult crickets, the other for growing crickets. Determine how many crickets you need to keep and buy a box (or more) of the right size.

Make sure the cricket box is large enough for the whole cricket. A big mistake that cricket owners often make is not buying a box that is large enough. When kept in too small a space, crickets can eat each other, resulting in a less supply of crickets, and you probably don’t want this. Make sure you buy a box that’s big enough!
Buy a clear plastic household container with a sturdy lid to keep the crickets inside. High-walled plastic boxes are a good choice. The 53-liter box can house a nest of over 500 crickets with enough cardboard boxes or egg blisters for the crickets to climb. The smooth surface of the plastic box will help reduce the number of crickets escaping.

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Create ventilation in the box. Cut a hole or two about 15 cm in diameter in the lid of the box to allow air to circulate. Cover the mosquito net on top to prevent crickets from crawling out, as they are likely to gnaw through the plastic net. You can use a hot glue gun to fix the net. If you want more control over the temperature, you can experiment with a variety of vents.

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Line the bottom of the box with a layer of vermiculite. Spread a layer of vermiculite on the bottom of the plastic container. This way, the crickets will have a base to crawl and the cricket box will be kept dry to prevent bacteria and reduce odors. Especially for crowded cricket nests, vermiculite must be replaced every 1-6 months, so buy a little more.

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Place a plastic box containing loose, moist topsoil in the cricket box. Female crickets need this soil box to lay eggs. The box should be just slightly above the vermiculite so crickets can get in easily. Make sure the topsoil is free of fertilizers and pesticides.

You can place a net on the ground to keep crickets from digging or eating eggs. Female crickets can lay eggs that pass through the net using their reproductive organs (egg-laying troughs).

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Buy 50 crickets or more. Make sure the number of crickets is enough for your pet to eat and there are 30-50 crickets left over for breeding. It is important that you have both male and female crickets, but more female crickets is better.

Female crickets have three long needles on the back of their tail, and the main needle (called the spawner) is used to lay eggs in the ground. The wings of the female crickets grow to their full length.
Male crickets have only two needles behind their tails. Their short and not fully grown wings help them to make the familiar cricket sound we often hear at night.

Start the process of raising crickets

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Set up cricket nests and feed them. Put all the crickets in the prepared cricket box. Place in the box a shallow dish of commercially available cricket or other food (high-quality dry cat food is fine), slightly away from the soil box.

You can feed crickets with fruit, sliced potatoes, greens and other vegetables to supplement their diet. Remember to clean up leftovers before they get moldy or rotten.
Other foods that can be fed to crickets include freshwater fish pellets, rabbit food (alfalfa pellets) or any other high protein food. ^{[1] X Research Source}
Try to mix different kinds of foods for crickets to enjoy. If your crickets are healthy, your pets will be healthy too. You should try to supplement dry food with pieces of vegetables and fruits plus greens like lettuce. This ensures the crickets will become a nutritious snack for your pet.

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Remember to provide enough water for the crickets. Crickets need a nearby and constant supply of water to stay alive and healthy. You just watch the crickets gather when you mist the cricket box and you will see. Here are a few ways cricket owners come up with ways to keep their crickets comfortable and well-hydrated:

Using a reptile drinking trough with an upside down water bottle attached, place a sponge inside the trough. The foam will prevent water from overflowing causing flooding inside the box.
Cut the core of the toilet paper roll lengthwise and then unfold it into a rectangle. Use a paper with good absorbency, such as a tissue, to wrap around a piece of cardboard and stand it up at an angle to form a “fortress”.
A dish of water gel (also sold as a soil substitute, such as “ppyacrylamide”) or an unflavored jelly is also a great source of water.

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Heating crickets. To stimulate crickets to breed and hatch crickets, you need to keep them warm. You can warm your crickets with a variety of methods such as reptile heaters, heating pads, or light bulbs. Room heaters can also provide a source of heat for crickets and incubate their eggs.

When buying to mate, male crickets only crow when the temperature is in the range of 13-38 degrees Celsius. Crickets grow best at 27-32 degrees Celsius.

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Give crickets time to breed. If provided with enough food, water and warmth, and generally well taken care of, crickets will multiply. Wait about two weeks for the crickets to mate and lay eggs. Crickets will dig into the ground about 2.5 cm below the topsoil to lay eggs. ^{[2] X Research Source} After two weeks, the topsoil will be filled with oblong-shaped cricket eggs about the size of half a grain of rice. Take these soil boxes out and put them in the incubator box.

While you wait for the crickets to lay eggs, you need to make sure to keep the moisture in the soil. Cricket eggs when dried out will spoil and become useless. You can fill a spray bottle with water and mist the soil from time to time to make sure the heat doesn’t dry out the soil.

Complete the cricket’s reproductive process

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Hatch. Cricket eggs need to be incubated at room temperature until hatching. You need to put the box of crickets eggs in a larger container with a tight-fitting lid and place it at a temperature of 29-32 degrees Celsius. After about two weeks (it will take longer if the temperature is lower), the baby crickets As small as a grain of sand, it will hatch into hundreds of children every day.

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Collect the baby crickets and put them in the baby cricket box. You need to provide adequate food and water so that the pinhead-sized crickets grow to the right size to return to the main cage – this usually takes another 7-10 days. .

Remember to moisten the baby cricket box regularly to make sure the crickets have enough water.
Consider placing the baby cricket box on a heating pad at 27-32 degrees Celsius.

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Repeat the process of raising the crickets. Continue with the above steps with a new litter of crickets to produce hundreds to thousands of crickets, and you’ll have an abundant supply for your pets, and possibly even your friends’ pets. Soon you will be an experienced cricketer! If the cricket is dead, pay special attention to the following factors:

Space is too tight. Crickets need a lot of space to live and breed. If the crickets become too crowded, they will start eating each other to eliminate competition in the ecosystem.
Insufficient/excess water. Your crickets may need more water than you think – misting and replenishing your cricket trough every two days is extremely important. However, do not drown your crickets. Frequent misting and adding water are enough to keep the humidity in the cricket box.
Not warm enough. Crickets like to live and reproduce in high temperature environments. You should try to maintain the optimal temperature in the cricket box around 27-32 degrees Celsius.

Advice

Get rid of dead crickets – crickets will eat the dead ones and spread the bacteria, eventually harming the entire cricket nest.
If there is a shortage of food and water for the crickets, you can replace both with a slice of potato.
A strip of tape stuck inside the cricket box can prevent the crickets from escaping because the slickness of the tape prevents the crickets from crawling up.
Replace the sponge in the water dish every two weeks or when it becomes dirty to prevent bacteria from growing in the water.
Learn more about cricket diet and care. This will help you take better care of your crickets and be successful in keeping them.
Foam tape used to seal the door slot can be used to seal the lid of the cricket box, preventing the crickets from escaping.
Every 6 months, you should buy a new litter of crickets to start the process of raising crickets again. This will help reduce possible problems caused by homozygous reproduction. This is also a good opportunity to replace the new layer of vermiculite.
Crickets breathe through their skin, so they won’t be able to breathe without space.
Cricket eggs will hatch in about 7-13 days. The optimum temperature for this process is around 29 degrees Celsius.
Feed the crickets oranges to supplement vitamin C.
If you want to get a handful of crickets out of the box, you can use the rolls of paper towels that are propped up against the sides of the box, then remove and shake the crickets to fall into the pet cage or move to your desired location.
If you feed your crickets to a pet that needs a lot of calcium (like a gecko that needs calcium powder, for example), you can feed the crickets a calcium-rich food like spinach or cheese. These foods also solve the concern of vitamin deficiency. Cricket foods will also affect your pet.

Warning

Watch out for pests that attack crickets like mold, mites, flies, and bacteria. You need to take preventive measures and eliminate pests to keep crickets healthy.
The humidity should not be kept too high. You will need to set up drinking water dishes for the crickets, but try to keep the humidity low to reduce mortality, mold, mites and flies.
Male crickets can make a lot of noise when they crow. You should consider leaving them somewhere so they won’t be disturbed by the crickets crowing.
50 seed crickets can produce more than 2000 chicks in the breeding cycle. Maybe you end up with more crickets than you intended and don’t know what to do with them.
If you have a cat, this shouldn’t be a problem. Cats love to chase and/or eat crickets! There’s no harm in eating crickets for cats, unless they’re eating so much that they’re hard to digest.
Use only topsoil free of fertilizers and pesticides to ensure crickets and eggs are not poisoned.
When newly hatched, baby crickets are only about the size of a grain of sand. You need to be careful not to let them come out of the box. (They are not capable of crawling up the sides of a glass or clear plastic container.)
Somehow, some crickets managed to get out. If you don’t like letting crickets roam freely around your house, you can set up cricket traps.

Steps

Prepare

Start the process of raising crickets

Complete the cricket’s reproductive process

Advice

Warning

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