How to Breed Crickets

Whether you are planning to breed crickets to feed to your own pets or to sell to the nearest pet store, these are easy insects to keep and reproduce. Providing them with proper food and housing and the opportunity to breed will guarantee a plentiful supply of baby crickets.

Things You'll Need

• Large plastic tubs or old aquariums
• Cardboard tubes and egg crates
• Cricket food
• Water
• Paper towel or sponge
• Sand or peat moss
• Incubator
• Heating pad
• Sweater box

Instructions

House Your Crickets

1. House the crickets. For a breeding colony of these insects you will need two containers. These can be plastic, metal or glass, but need lids with holes for air circulation. Old aquariums work very well.

2. Make hiding places for the crickets. Place the tubes from paper towel or toilet paper roles or pieces of cardboard eggs crates into the cricket palace.

3. Shade your crickets from direct light. Your cricket house will need to be placed in a shady spot with good ventilation.

Breed Your Crickets

1. Feed the crickets well. Like most insects, they will eat finely ground oatmeal, commercial cricket food and minced fruits and vegetables.

2. Water the crickets. Soak a paper towel or sponge and wring most of the water out of it, then place it in the cricket container and they will suck the water out of it. Replace it every other day.

3. Provide nesting material. Place a small container with 2 to 3 inches of damp sand or peat moss on the floor of the cricket container. Breeding crickets will lay their eggs in this material.

4. Check the nesting material 3 or 4 times a week to make sure it stays moist. Spray with water when necessary. When the nesting material is filled with small white oval cricket eggs -- after 4 to 7 days -- remove it to an incubator.

Hatch and Raise Baby Crickets

1. Prepare the incubator. This is as simple as placing the container of nesting material on a heating pad. Make sure you have a lid with small holes for air circulation for this container.

2. Watch for hatchlings. Once the eggs have begun to hatch, move the container to a sweater box with holes in the lid for air. Keep the box on the heating pad.

3. Place a jar lid of cricket food and a sponge soaked in water (and wrung out) on the bottom of the box. The babies will stay in the box, enjoying the heat, the food and the water.

4. Remove and discard the nesting material once all the eggs have hatched. When the babies have grown to about 1/4 of an inch, place 50 to 75 of them back in the original breeding containers to keep your colony alive and reproducing.

Tips & Warnings

• Leave the lid loosely on the container of nesting material when you place it in the sweater box. This will keep the sand or peat moss from drying out, while allowing the baby crickets to crawl out to find food and water.

• Do not put an open container of water into the cricket container. The insects will simply drown and make a mess in the cage.