couple of random cricket questions

[Electric]

So I opened up my cage this morning to mist and I spotted a few pinhead crickets which I assume were laid by the females that weren't eaten right away. I was just wondering do they hatch and come out of the egg or does the 'egg' grow legs and become the cricket? just asking cause I've seen the size of the eggs before and it's hard to believe that something even smaller will come out of them

second question... what are the standard methods used by cricket breeders to count their crickets when boxing them? I ask cause I bought a 1000 box of 2/3 sized ones a couple weeks ago and although there were alot of them in there I'm having trouble believing that there are actually 1000 of them. I doubt someone actually sits there and counts them 1 by 1 or 10 by 10 so i was just curious of how they actually do this?

my cham eats more or less 10 per day so that would be roughly 3 months worth or crickets... we'll see how long the box lasts but i highly doubt it will last me 3 months

 

[Tygerr]

You should read this article: Breeding Crickets (www.chameleonnews.com)
That should clear up your questions about the cricket life cycle.

As for counting them, you're right that breeders do an approximation rather than an actual count. But there are tools in the trade to do this, like this one: http://www.armstrongcrickets.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=CTGY&Store_Code=ACF&Category_Code=CCC
In general, I've found that this approximation usually works out in the customer's favour (i.e. you get more crickets than what the box said), but I guess it could go either way.
And although it may not look like 1000 crickets, you'd be surprised how many there are if you actually started counting...
Most of the cricket breeders in South Africa simply sell their crickets as 1/4 boxes, half boxes, or full boxes, to avoid the counting dilemma.

 

[pohchunyee]

There is a few pictures in this link that actually show the size of the eggs. Is very tiny. Cricket hatched from the eggs after fully developed hence called pinheads cricket.

http://skylab.org/~chugga/cricket/

As far as i know, packaging crickets varied from company to company. Usually they will have their own "measuring" cilinder marked with approximate height and volume when cricket is being filled to that point (thats will be the approximate amount of cricket). Some company will overcount about 10% just to replace those cricket DOA. Our eyes are trained to observe larger things, usually when something is 2/3 inch small and don't take too much space, we would assume they are not 1000 of them...if you like..just count them..LOL..

Wow, 1000 cricket can last you for 3 months. Thats good. 3000 cricket only last me 1 month. I have too many mouth to feed.

 

[Electric]

thanks yeah I've read both those articles before I was just asking cause the egg is so small I don't understand how something smaller can actually come out of it, but I guess the egg gets bigger while incubating

I've also seen that cricket counter thing before, they use one to scoop them up at one place I go to. In my head I was imagining some sort of conveyor belt with like a sensor that counts the crickets as they go by...but I guess it's not that high tech yet lol