Cricket Hatchlings!

CleaTheChameleon

CleaTheChameleon

New Member
Hey everyone. I managed to breed crickets and get hatchlings today! They have been incubating in my garage for 12 days and today i noticed them hatching. Thanks to Elisa Hinkle for all the tips on breeding them.

I will try to post pics and keep you all updated!
 
Thanks! At first i thought they were ants and i said oh man the ants got to the eggs and then i looked closely and saw they were crickets! I was so happy

Mismo-Do you have problems keeping your pinheads alive?
 
Congrats! I hope you can keep them growing. The die off rate is incredible. One time I got about 80 of 120 or so to live(which is apparently pretty good?!) :)
 
Wish me luck then ahhaha. I hope i can keep them alive and now i know how to do all this once my babies start popping out:eek::p

Berg- i dont think you can see them in pics ahah but i will make a video;)
 
I tried it aswell but you have to breedd absolutely loads o feed them so expect to buy some crickets in well done i remember when i first bred crix they are so small and jumpy
 
Congrats...
I used to find it tough at first but sucess comes with experience.
I keep them the normal way except I pick out the pregnant(fat looking) females and put them in a seperate box that is exclusively for laying eggs.

I then take them out after a 1 week and repeat the cycle. Once the crix hatch, I raise them in that very box until about half an inch in size. Then they are shifted to the "adult box" .

I get a 90% of the crix to reach adulthood. Try it out.
 
weezyboi94 said:
Congrats...
I used to find it tough at first but sucess comes with experience.
I keep them the normal way except I pick out the pregnant(fat looking) females and put them in a seperate box that is exclusively for laying eggs.

I then take them out after a 1 week and repeat the cycle. Once the crix hatch, I raise them in that very box until about half an inch in size. Then they are shifted to the "adult box" .

I get a 90% of the crix to reach adulthood. Try it out.
Click to expand...

Thanks Man. Will do
 
good luck - for me hatching is easy and I can get them just past the pinhead stage then they all die out over about 2 days. Have no idea what I'm doing wrong. The need to be a little warm - maybe 75- 80 degrees The small ones like greens of some sort - lettuce - which would also provide moisture. Might try a container of damp vermiculite or damp soil that they can move in and out of. But don't listen to me - never had too much luck even though I've had thousands of pinheads at an one time.
 
I'm no expert at this. I'm learning just as you are. But here is what I'm doing and I have hardly any dying. Even my adults are all alive. I picked out about 200 adults as they morphed into adults. I guess I've had them for about 3 weeks. But none have died.

Deli lids are good for offering water crystals and food. I feed them a damp cricket food mix made from gutload (Steve's Cricket Crack) and some finely ground multigrain cereal, corn meal, walnuts, some organic dry dog food (but just a little).

I made the mistake of using the vermiculite as substrate in the first cricket bin but quickly decided against any substrate on my second set of hatchlings. I recommend just a clean tub with egg crate only. Pieces of paper towel tubes or cardboard create nice ramps from food dishes to basking or hiding areas.

I keep a basking light directed at the egg crate and notice that the crickets all gather closely there. Kinda cute.

My little crickets are growing up. They're two weeks old now and I have thousands and thousands and thousands. The trick is having enough climbing surfaces for them. Add layers of egg crate accordingly.

Keeping the bin neat and simple makes it easy to replace food and water crystal dishes (lids).

I have three bins right now. One is for the adults that keep cranking out the eggs. Every week I place a new egg laying container in there for the females to use. The second bin has the crickets I hatched out two weeks ago. The third one is clean and waiting for the next batch of crickets to hatch.
 
getting the hatchlings to 2-3 weeks old is pretty easy - let me know if this set-up still works all the way to adulthood. As i mentioned, they do completely fine to a point - but there is a "hump" to get over that many, many people struggle with
 
chrisw said:
getting the hatchlings to 2-3 weeks old is pretty easy - let me know if this set-up still works all the way to adulthood. As i mentioned, they do completely fine to a point - but there is a "hump" to get over that many, many people struggle with
Click to expand...

Sure, I will give an update in about a week. The hatchlings started on May 18th. So we're almost at 3 weeks... 19 days actually. Lots of shedding going on in the bin. They are noticeably larger. I don't see any dead crickets yet.
 
Gotta say thanks to Steve S. and Elisa for the inspiration here, too. I just checked and have my first cricket hatchlings this morning. Not too many so far, but I'm hoping this will eventually help put a big dent in my $75 a week cricket bill. As for keeping them alive, I've toured a cricket ranch and spoken to the owner about keeping little ones alive. He said THE most important thing is heat. Smaller crickets can't contain body heat well at all so they keep the whole room really warm. I don't remember exactly, but I'm wanting to say it was like 95F in the hatchling rooms. I keep my small cricket tubs warm now and have much less die off. Hopefully the same works for my own pinheads.
 
Kent67 said:
Gotta say thanks to Steve S. and Elisa for the inspiration here, too. I just checked and have my first cricket hatchlings this morning. Not too many so far, but I'm hoping this will eventually help put a big dent in my $75 a week cricket bill. As for keeping them alive, I've toured a cricket ranch and spoken to the owner about keeping little ones alive. He said THE most important thing is heat. Smaller crickets can't contain body heat well at all so they keep the whole room really warm. I don't remember exactly, but I'm wanting to say it was like 95F in the hatchling rooms. I keep my small cricket tubs warm now and have much less die off. Hopefully the same works for my own pinheads.
Click to expand...

Very good to know. I don't keep the workshop that warm but I think inside their bin it's about 90+. I'll change the heat source to an infrared. That should be even better. It's not like they want the light. They just need heat.

Thanks for the tip!
 
Update

Well things aren't looking so well. I always keep them warm so they have heat, i always feed them and take out the dried lettuce. I dont know what im doing wrong. They all started to die on me. I only have about 10 left. :(

I think i will try again when i come back from vacation and when my babies hatch. The outcome of this breeding, is that now i know how to do it.
 
Let me know when you get back. You can give me a call and we'll figure out what the problem is. I'm sure it's something simple. If I can breed them, everyone can. lol
 
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