An Illustrated Guide to Raising and Breeding Crickets

An Illustrated Guide to
Raising and Breeding Crickets by TheSpookstress

Crickets can be a necessary addition to your home if you need to feed them to a reptile or other insectivore. I find their song a pleasure to hear as well.
To the right is an example of some of what you will need. The two big tupperwares in the corner contain two different sizes of crickets. The boxes are each about 2ft. x 1 1/2 ft, and about 1ft. high. This is enough to comfortably house about 1000 crickets each. There is a hole cut into the lid with fine netting taped over it to allow for air circulation, and to keep out the tiny flies that would otherwise lay eggs on the crickets' water source. The netting can be purchased at any store that sells fabric. The cage must be cleaned once a week. I find this easiest to do half at a time, so all of the crickets have somewhere to hide while you disturb the other half. Keep the lid over the half of the box you aren't cleaning to prevent jumpers.
The second picture is the inside of a tupperware. Most of the crickets hide when you take the lid off. Crickets like plenty of dark places to hide (toilet paper rolls and other cardboard boxes, or vertical surfaces to stand on). They stick well to cardboard, paper, and paper towels, but cannot climb the smooth plastic walls of the tupperware, so cannot climb out. Paper towels on the bottom of the cage help with easy cleaning. This box has a smaller tupperware to hold the food, which is dry cat food. You will find many recipes for cricket food on the net, but I find cat food contains sufficient vitamins and calcium for both the crickets and the reptiles that may later eat them.

A paper towel folded over the edge of the food container and clipped on allows access in and out. You don't need to keep the food contained, but its less messy if you do. The water dish is a small tupperware with a hole cut in the lid and 2 kitchen sponges (NOT the kind with antibacterial chemicals in them) stacked inside. You can fill the water container, and as the water level gets lower, the sponges still pull the water to the top. Crickets can't swim. Drinking from a sponge in this way keeps them from drowning. Access to the water is provided with a toilet paper roll, and paper towel piece clipped on...be SURE that no paper towel falls on or touches the sponge or water. You will have a soaking wet cage in minutes. This container will need cleaning once a week. Be sure to soap up both the container and sponges with non-antibacterial soap, and rinse out all soap before refilling with clean water.
Left photo: If your crickets are 3/8" or smaller, cut up a sponge and put small pieces under the edge of the opening in the lid of the water container. Small crickets will fit under there otherwise and drown, (or not reach the sponge for water and die of dehydration, or get stranded on the sponge and die of starvation). Make sure your container is not too tall for these crickets (no taller than an inch), or they may not find the water source. If you have the smallest of baby crickets, you can just dampen a sponge and leave it on the floor of the box in a very shallow dish (jar lid) with access ramps for them to reach it... a sponge left out this way will have to be re-wetted more often.

Breeding - For breeding, you will need a small bag of potting soil, some small containers for holding a few crickets and an "egglaying tub". In the top picture above is a container with a green lid. This will work as a breeding box, but I suggest wrapping it in the fine netting or flies on the water source will become a problem. Otherwise you can just use a container with a hole cut in the lid and fine netting taped on like the bigger house. Below is the inside of a breeding box. Make a tub out of any container that is about 1 inch deep, fill it with potting soil, and provide access ramps. They will lay eggs in this. Spray the soil with water often. It must be kept moist to keep the eggs alive, but don't wet it so much that water collects at the bottom and drowns crickets. This can be left in with the crickets for 24 hours to a week. (People disagree on which is better, they do start eating the eggs if left too long).

This breeding box likewise must contain cat food and water. Temperature is important. Crickets kept at 70F in a non-humid environment will stay the same size for awhile (even months), which is useful if you have a reptile that only eats a certain size. Crickets kept at 80-88F in humidity can grow from babies to full adult in as little as 3 weeks. Keeping them at 70F will, I believe, (though I don't know for sure), make them live longer. In my experience they don't die of old age until they get old, though I'm not a bug doctor. The longest my crickets have lived at 70F is about 8 months. NEVER put a cricket tank in the sun. Use a reptile heater under the tank (cost $10-$15). Next page - telling males from females for breeding,.. and what molting looks like.