What Do You Feed a Pet Cricket?
Pet crickets require regular feedings of nutritionally balanced foods that are suited to their nutritional requirements. These foods may be purchased in stores, or may even be mixed together at home by interested cricket owners. Care should be taken to ensure that crickets always have enough food, or malnutrition, cannibalism and death may occur.
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Dietary Requirements
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Crickets require a high-protein, balanced diet. Fruits, vegetables and even food scraps may be acceptable. Crickets do not like overly large pieces of food; instead, they prefer small particles that can be eaten easily.
Food Types
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Commercial cricket food is available, both in small packets and in larger bulk amounts. Stores that specialize in reptiles will likely carry it or be able to order it if they do not.
Pet crickets may also be fed ground-up dry cat or dog food, which has a high protein content. This may be supplemented with fresh fruits and vegetables as well, for balance.
Some cricket owners opt to create their own cricket food, rather than buy more expensive pre-made foods. Dried cat food is tossed in a mixture of skim milk and protein powders, then mixed with alfalfa pellets (such as those that are commonly fed to guinea pigs, hamsters and gerbils). Cricket owners opting for this feeding method also supplement this food with fresh fruits and vegetables.
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Considerations
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Cost can be a major factor in deciding what to feed pet crickets. If they are happy and well fed, they will begin to breed. As they breed, cricket owners will have more crickets to feed. Costs of any feeding method will necessarily rise. Availability of ready-made cricket food may be scarce, depending on the area where a cricket owner lives. Foods may be available through mail-order or Internet sources if cricket owners live in remote areas and do not wish to feed their crickets via other methods.
Warning
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Failure to feed crickets their preferred high-protein diet can lead crickets to become malnourished, to die and possibly to begin eating each other. Cannibalism will start with the weakest crickets being eaten first, but may become a cricket free-for-all worthy of a horror film.
Prevention/Solution
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Crickets should be fed regularly. Frequency of feedings will vary depending on the number of crickets being housed together. Dead crickets should be removed from cricket housing immediately to avoid potential for cannibalism. Cricket housing should be cleaned and food changed regularly to encourage good cricket eating habits.
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References
- Photo Credit cricket image by Gail Oswald from Fotolia.com
