cricket breeding?

[wonder_chunky]

whats the best way to breed crickets
heres what i do

i put a container of dirt in with a bunch of full grown adult crickets, and about a week later i'll remove the conatianer and replace it with a new one. then i'd take the container with the eggs in it and put it in a container that is heated, about a week otr so later babies start coming out and thats when i put the next container on the heat.
but......when the babies start to come out of the container alot of them run back in and dig down to the bottom and stay there...so i end up not getting too many crickets....and its hard as hell to get them out of that dirt.
is there an easier way to breed them or am i just screwed:p

ryan

[Kathy]

what do you feed them? I tried to save gas one time by buying a lot of crickets at once and saving the extras for later, i put in some plants and stuff but they just ended up eating each other. In the end I had about 3 extras, lmao

[Gorelith]

I feed mine a mix for breeding waxworms, it's basically all bran, honey, glicerine and water all mixed together. I also give them a commercial food made by T-Rex It's called calcium plus. Usually you can find cricket food by going into any pet store and say you're looking for gut-load. It's pretty cheap and very effective. I'd still recommend dusting your crickets though. You may have found that putting water in with them results in a lot of drowned crix. An easy solution to this would be a product called Fluker's Original Cricket Quencher which is also available in a calcium fortified formula for pennies more. Basically the stuff looks and feels like Jell-O and it prevents the little buggers from drowning themselves. I'm breeding my own crix as well and i've just got mine in a wooden box that measures 16" X 16" X 16", I use egg crates in it, and my biggest problem is when i feed my lizards, i take out an egg crate, shake it into a plastic bag (my shake 'n bake crix bag for calcium dusting) but i end up throwing a bunch of baby crix that are no bigger than the head of a pin into the bag which gets dumped into the enclosure. Hence most of my baby crix never get big. Best of luck with your breeding efforts, hope i've been of some help.

[wonder_chunky]

yeah i feed them store bought cricket food and alot of veggies and things.
gorelith: i dont have all of my crix in the same container so i dont have the same problem as you, you should have them in seperate buckets (or any other kind of container)
i have the breeding pretty much down pat, i just need to get my timing right so i can always have crix.

thanks for the help guys
Ryan