spider in cricket package!

Marc10edora

Marc10edora

Avid Member
I just got my shipment in from mulberry farms. I ordered 300 crickets and one of the containers had a really fat spider in it. It looked like the spider was at a buffet because it was really fat. I wish I had a camera, but the spider looks almost like a black widow with no red hour glass symbol. Should I feed it to my cham? What do you think it was there for? Maybe it was an accident? I've heard of beetles shipped with crickets, but not spiders. Also one of the containers has a really anoying cricket chirping in it. Usually the crickets I get from petsmart don't make any noise, but this one does. Are there certain breeds of crickets that are noisless? Or do they make noise when they reach adulthood? On top of all this I found out that the dubia roaches that I ordered, are way to big to feed to my cham. They are twice the size of her head. Now I have 20 dubia that I don't know what to do with. Please help me think of something I can do with these. Maybe breed them. But they creep the hell outa me.:eek:
 
I definitely wouldn't feed the spider to your chameleon without knowing the exact species and whether or not it is toxic.

You are right about crickets not chirping until they reach adulthood. If it is just one, you are lucky! I order 2000 3/4 inch crickets every two weeks and by the time the two weeks in up i usually have a few hundred chirping! I have grown pretty accustomed to it, but I am surprised that no one in the neighboring apartments has ever complained!

As for the dubia roaches, I would definitely breed them. They are super easy to breed, have almost no odor (unlike crickets, yuck!) and are a great sourse of food for your cham. Here are a few basic dubia care sites:

http://www.nyworms.com/dubiacare.htm
http://www.exotic-pets.eu/blaptica-dubia.php

The best thing about the roaches are that if you keep the larger ones (which you will have to if they are too big) and mainly feed off the (smaller, more appropriately sized) juvenile males for awhile, eventually you will have a self sustaining colony that you can use as a very cheap food source. Feeding off mostly males at first helps keep the competition down and the more females you have, the more babies! They breed so fast that after a bit you shouldn't have to buy near the amount of feeders except to add some variety to your cham's diet. This is especially effective if you only have one or two chameleons. I currently have 5 chams, a bearded dragon and 6 leopard geckos (with 2 eggs coming every other week or so!) that I feed out of a lobster roach colony that started with only around 30 and grew to close to 1000 in just a few months. Keep them warm and feed them and they will multiply like you wouldn't believe!

(Oh, by the way.. you will get used to the roaches.. I was creeped out by them at first, but now I almost feel guilty feeding them off)

Good luck!
 
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1) Don't feed the spider to the cham. It's not worth the risk of a spider bite.
(It probably got in there by accident)

2) There are no 'noiseless' crickets. When crickets become adults and develop wings, the develop the ability to chirp. And they will chirp - incessantly. So what you have in your container is an adult cricket, and the reason that the previous ones were noiseless is because they didn't grow old enough to chirp.

3) If you can, breed the Dubias. You'll eventually have a supply of roaches of all sizes (from nymphs to adults) that you'll be able to match to the size of your cham.
 
Female crickets of the species we normally use to feed to our chameleons don't chirp...they don't need to. Males chirp to attract a mate.

Then, the males of some species don't chirp either...
http://web.extension.uiuc.edu/champaign/homeowners/010901.html
"Camel crickets, also known as cave crickets, may also be found indoors. These crickets don't chirp".

http://roseykrh.blogspot.com/2006_09_17_archive.html
"black field crickets in Hawaii have evolved wings that don't chirp."
It happened (from what I have read) due to a parasitic fly. The downside for the cricket is that it can't chirp to attract a mate.

Some other interesting cricket trivia...
Telling the temperature by the cricket's chirp....
http://www.loc.gov/rr/scitech/mysteries/cricket.html

Swarming crickets....
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/DyeHard/story?id=2124982&page=1

Fighting crickets....(well...sort of...)
http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2000/march8/crickets-38.html

Variable Field Cricket...
http://cricket.unl.edu/research.html
 
Thanks for the dubia info. I just got back from WalMart and picked up some containers for the 300+ crickets and the 20 dubia I ordered. I lined one container with a very slippery plastic so the dubia can't crawl out. Since the weather is starting to get hot, I plan on keeping the roaches in the garage, where it can get up to 90+*F during this time of the year. Hopefully by the end of summer, I'll have a steady colony. As long as I don't get too many, I should be alright. But don't tell my parents I'm breeding roaches or they'll probably kick me out of the house....:D If my mom see's one of those things she would freak out. They're the biggest roach I've seen in real life. As for the spider, I set it free into the garden. There are two geckos that live outside my house and I'm sure they'll eat him. They especially enjoy it when I clean out my chams cage because they will eat up any left over feeders. They're not even shy either. It's as if they don't care that I'm there.
 
Interesting info Kinyonga.

I especially liked that story about the fighting crickets.

Based on the info you provided, I'll modify my initial statement:

2) There are no colonies of 'noiseless' feeder crickets.
Sure, the females may not chirp, but in a decent sized colony of them, who is going to take the time to sort out the boys from the girls?
And there may be species that don't chirp at all, but I doubt you'll find pet stores selling them as feeder crickets.

So the bottom line is, adult crickets can be darn annoying. I wish I could get hold of someone with Dubias in South Africa...
 
Tygerr...I thought your statement about crickets being noiseless was a generalization...
I came across some of the sites I posted when I was searching for vitamin A in crickets...thought they were interesting.

Roo...i had to laugh at your comment about Jiminy! I hate to burst your bubble, but...he sang...."when you wish upon a star". (Well...actually the voice of Jiminy was provided by Cliff Edwards who also sang the song.)
 
Roo...i had to laugh at your comment about Jiminy! I hate to burst your bubble, but...he sang...."when you wish upon a star". (Well...actually the voice of Jiminy was provided by Cliff Edwards who also sang the song.)
Click to expand...

Not a problem ... I have no bubble to burst. Just thought I'd throw in a bit humor with all this cricket trivia/info.

-roo
 
I went to Barnes and Nobles today and picked up a bug reference book and found out what that spider was. I found out that it is called a Comb-Footed Spider and is related to the BLACK WIDOW:eek: Luckily I didn't feed it to my cham or it would have been bad news for her. The Spider was exactly the shape of a black widow except that it was all brown. I just hope it wasn't in the cricket package long enough to lay eggs. Now I'm really paranoid:confused: Hopefully the crickets will eat the eggs if any were laid. I let the spider go into the garden the other day. It didn't surprise me that a black widow got into the package. Mulberry farms ships from southern California and I know there are black widows there.
 
Oh yeah, I also had a dubia question. Which one is the female? Wings or no wings? I'm trying to get rid of most of the males, so there is less competition when breeding.
 
how many crickets shud i feed my baby yemen when i get him? im nt a fan of cickets is waxworms any gd or any other choices i shud go for.i live in uk and u know it always rains here lol
 
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