Breeding Crickets
Acheta domesticus

Sam Forster

Breeding Crickets is relatively simple providing you meet some basic requirements.

What you need:

• 1 x Plastic Tupperware Containers (10cm x 18cm x 8cm) (W x L x D). This will be the egg box.
• 3 x Housing containers of your choice, preferably polystyrene or wooden boxes.
• 300 various sized crickets. You could purchase all adults but you will then encounter a stage where all the original adults die and none of their young are yet able to breed.
• Lots of newspaper
• Food for the crickets; Cereal, Bran, dry cat/dog food, or comercially available foods.
• 3 x Small water bowl with clean, detergent free sponges to provide water to the crickets without providing an area for them to drown.

Method:

1. Set-up the three housing containers with newspaper, food, watering containers.
2. Divide the crickets into three sizes, small (less than 0.5cm) medium (0.5cm - 1.5cm) and adult (bigger than 1.5cm) and place these into the three containers. These boxes must be kept at 28 degrees Celsius (82 degrees Fahrenheit) and need a day/night cycle of 12 hours.
3. In the adult cricket box add the egg box filled with damp soil or peat moss.
4. After twenty-four hours the egg box should be completely full of eggs and should be removed. At this point i can be sprayed with water to replenish the moisture and covered with a lid or clingfilm.
5. After approximately fourteen days at a temperature of 28 degrees Celsius (82 degrees Fahrenheit), the eggs will begin to hatch. At this point the cricket boxes can be redesignated one size larger and the egg box can be added to the old adult box. This box will become the small cricket box. The excess adults can now be used for feeding.
   If you require more crickets or non-adult crickets for feeding more egg boxes can be added to the adult box while the first eggs are maturing and these babies will fulfil that requirement.

Once this method become routine you will have a constant supply of crickets to feed to your frogs.