[Clansman]

I breed a few different types of insects for feeding to birds.

I've finally settled on three species that I find easy to breed and keep (and that don't fly!)

Locusts were great too but aside from the flying they can climb up and hang from glass so not easy to manage!

Crickets

Hi guys, i've just joined the forum (i've definitely come to the right place) so i'm jumping in late to this one.

But I have experience of this, I breed and eat my own crickets

I bought some from a live food supplier last year and bred them.

I didn't eat the bought ones, I didn't know their history/chemical exposure/feeding etc so they were just used for breeding until they died, they only live a few months.

I also tried grasshoppers/locusts but wasn't successful in breeding these.

Plus they can climb glass and fly!

So I stuck to the crickets who live happily in the bottom of a few large fish tanks.

They need to be kept warm to breed, i keep mine around 26 C.

There are different types, brown and black are the most common available.

Blacks grow about 1/3 bigger than the browns but are lots noisier! (only the males chirp)

Here's some interesting info on insect nutrition :

The food conversion ratio of most insects is 2:1
e.g.
2 Kg of feeding will produce 1 Kg of insects

Here are the conversion ratios of other animals:
2:1 Chicken
2:1 Fish
3:1 Pig
5:1 Sheep
8:1 Cow

So they are as efficient in turning food into bodyweight as chicken and some fish
But whereas these animals require specialised feeding to attain that conversion ratio, crickets will do it eating any old food you give them, even grass!!
So the cost of feeding insects can be virtually zero.

There is very little processing involved in crickets, I bagged mine live, stuck them in the freezer, baked them and ate them.
making a hamburger in the kitchen from a live cow is a bit more involved

Here are some interesting nutritional values I found.
(all values are per 100g)

-----------------CALORIES---------PROTEIN---------FAT----------
Beef------------- 288 --------------- 26 -------------20-----------
Chicken----------109 --------------- 22 ------------ 20 ----------
Fish ---------------84 --------------- 18 -------------- 1 ----------
Crickets ---------121 --------------- 13 -------------- 5 ---------
Caterpillars ---- 430 --------------- 28 -------------15 ----------
Grasshoppers -- 257 --------------- 21 --------------3 ----------

So crickets are on a par nutritionally with chicken but with 1/4 of the fat.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

Here's a little blog I did describing my first time eating them.....

"Last night I had a wee spur of the moment decision to try and eat some of them! (sorry I didn't video it but it wasn't very exciting anyway)

I caught 100 or so adults in a bag and put them in the freezer (most humane way to kill them apparently)

After half an hour or so they were all dead and i removed ten from the bag.

I put them on a baking tray and stuck them in the oven for 20 mins

When I took them out they looked just the same, although they were baked hard and not squishy anymore, a bit like the texture of crisps/potato chips.

I put them on a plate, took them through to the sofa and.......... stared at them for a while!

I wasn't really put off by the fact they are insects, well maybe a little....

I couldn't eat maggots or worms (actually if I was starving I could) but a baked cricket isn't a worm.

on my scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being a worm, a crispy baked cricket on a plate is a 3

So i picked one up and ate it.....

now as soon as its in your mouth and you start crunching it, the insect thoughts just disappear, it actually tastes ok.

In fact its better than ok, its not at all like the Crocodile Dundee idea of "Well you can live on it but it tastes like ****", they actually taste ok.

In fact I found myself reaching for another couple before I realised it.

Once they were gone I went through and put the rest of them in the oven.

20 minutes later i had a bowl of crispy crickets, a quick sprinkle of garlic salt later and i was sitting watching tv crunching into them as if they were dry roasted peanuts!

Finished them in no time and could quite happily have eaten more!

If the thought of eating them as they are puts you off, grind them into a fine powder.

A lot of desert dwelling Asian and African tribes use finely ground insect powder as a high protein, long lasting food source when making long journeys.

Their optimal temperature is 29C (85F)

At this temperature they will grow and breed at the quickest rate, although the males will also chirp more, chirping attracts females/warns off other males.

Their life cycle at 29C is approximately as follows:

2 weeks = Eggs hatch, They will moult (shed their skin) approximately 8-10 times as they grow

8 weeks = Adult (final moult) for a period of 2-3 days after this moult is the only time crickets are able to fly.

8 1/2 weeks = Sexual maturity is reached (ability to fly is lost) and mating begins

9 weeks = Females start laying eggs and will continue to do so until they die.

17-27 weeks = dead from old age (or baked with garlic salt)

Females will lay 50-100 eggs every 2-3 days, so one pair of crickets under the correct conditions could easily produce upwards of 250 per week.

If they live say an average of 21 weeks thats 12 weeks of egg laying so roughly 3000 young produced.

If you also consider that by that her 12th week of egg laying, the young she produced in her first week have already laid approx 750 eggs EACH then you can start to appreciate the potential numbers here.

I keep mine at a lower temperature which keeps them ticking along but only at around a third of their potential breeding/growth rates.

The best info I can find is that one cricket weighs approx 1g so 1000 to the Kilo or 450 to the pound.

My breeding tank holds 12 breeding pairs, I do eat them but mainly i feed them to the chickens and the fish (free food)

BUT if it ever comes to the point where I need to expand and produce large numbers then its just a case of increasing the temperature and the breeding numbers and within weeks I could have an abundance of them.

They will eat virtually anything, meat, veg, fruit, dog biscuits, you name it, a great way to get rid of your kitchen waste.

Ask all the questions you like, it took me a long time to research all this so i'l gladly help anyone else looking to find out about it.

I keep the breeders separate.

What I do is use a small tub (butter tub size) full of damp peat for them to lay eggs in.

I remove this tub once a week from the breeding tank and replace it with a new one.

I then put the tub with the eggs into its own tank.

This helps keep each group a similar age (within a week of each other)

You could leave them together but you could be removing young adults instead of old ones and the old ones would be dying etc so its not ideal

Plus the adults will eat smaller crickets.

Sexing is easy, female crickets have three long extrusions on their behind with the main one (called ovipositor) that it uses to deposit the eggs in the ground and will also grow fully developed wings.

Male crickets have two extrusions. They have short under-developed wings that they use to produce the chirp.

I suppose if you were trying to harvest them from a  limited number you could pick out males and leave all the females to lay eggs (with a few males)

They are very fast and hard to catch if they escape but moving a tank into a cooler area really slows them down, if i put a tank outside on a cold day they become so lethargic i can pick them up by hand easily

[Clansman]

My breeding tank



Tank key - Vermiculite is commonly used for gardening, its pretty cheap and it absorbs moisture, better than sand or soil.



Large female, this is about max size for these, the black crickets are larger (but loads noisier)



I won't say they never escape but mine rarely get out, in fact if you were reasonably careful you could easily ensure none got out.

They can't climb glass and although they can fly for a day or two, i've never seen them try it.

i've had a couple running about inside the house which probably escaped during the transfer from the rearing tanks to the containers I use to carry them in.

I can quite understand people's reluctance to eat bugs themselves but breeding crickets such as these would provide a very cheap, low labour intensive source of food for other livestock.

My chickens love them, my fish eat them and i'm sure mixed in with other feeding they would provide a great source of nutrition for any animal.

These are the type I use, Brown field crickets, I bought 50 large sized ones initially

http://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_odkw=crickets+live+food&_osacat=0&_from=R40&_trksid=p2045573.m570.l1313.TR0.TRC0&_nkw=brown+crickets+live+food&_sacat=0

These are the Black crickets, i'm going to try them soon, larger but noisier than the Browns.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_odkw=brown+crickets+live+food&_osacat=0&_from=R40&_trksid=p2045573.m570.l1313.TR0.TRC0&_nkw=black+crickets+live+food&_sacat=0

[Clansman]

I should also point out that these crickets will not survive outside in the UK climate.

Yes they would probably do ok in the summer, they might even breed but they would not survive the winter.

Another thing I have only just found out is that freezing crickets for a short time does not automatically kill them as I previously thought.

Yes, freezing them for a few days will kill them but for an hour or so, not necessarily.

the colder the temperature the less active they become until the body shuts down altogether.

They have been kept in refrigerators (not freezers) for up to a week in this motionless state before being warmed up again and "brought back to life"

Here is the text I found :

"A research team of biologists at Western University (Canada), has discovered precisely how field crickets recover from a bout of extremely cold temperatures.

Their findings were published on November 28th 2012 by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The study was led by PhD student Heath MacMillan, under Professor Brent Sinclair at Western University.

MacMillan’s team found that crickets recover from chill-coma by replenishing salt and water imbalances in the body. This cannot happen successfully if the insect is left frozen for an extended period of time. Otherwise, the metabolism will just slow until it stops. Yet, if the cricket is given a brief moment of normal temperatures, the recovery process begins.

MacMillan says, “Insects lose the ability to maintain proper water balance in the cold, so when they are chilled, water and sodium move from the insect blood, called hemolymph, into their gut. This is bad for the insect because it concentrates potassium in the blood that remains, which leaves muscles unable to function.”

Once a live frozen cricket is taken into normal room temperature, its body begins restoring potassium concentration to the right levels. Often just a few minutes after its brought to normal temperature, the cricket is able to move its limbs again."

I watched a tv program on insect eating in various parts of the world which started me thinking about trying it.

The bit that really got me thinking about it showed a school in Thailand where the kids caught crickets at night and brought them in for their lunch where they were cooked in a large stir fry and they got a bowl each for lunch and seemed to really enjoy them.

The program makers arranged an ice cream vendor to turn up and the kids were offered free ice cream or another bowl of crickets.. Most took the crickets! So they obviously liked them better than ice cream.

The idea to feed them to the chickens and fish was just an afterthought

[Clansman]

They will still breed and grow quite happily at normal room temperatures albeit slower, The place I keep them in has a heater on a thermostat but I keep it on low.

I suppose I could move them into the chicken shed or in beside the rabbits or in beside me to keep the temperature up a bit in the event of power failure.

I have a load of tanks and just use them as needed but normally I just have my 4 feet breeding tank and 1 or two 5 foot tanks to rear the young in.

They are mainly a treat, not really a regular staple diet as such but it could be done.

Wee update on this one.

I've now discovered the Dubia Beetle via some of the reptile forums.

These are apparently replacing crickets as the new feeder insect.

South American in origin, they are basically a cockroach and have many advantages over crickets.

They are pretty much bomb proof, I've kept some for 3 months without food or water and only a few died, a cricket colony would have died out in just a couple of weeks.

They can survive colder temperatures, they just become dormant although they would not survive UK winters.

Lifespan of almost two years.

Livebirth, no more fannying about with egg tubs, rearing tanks etc

They grow a LOT bigger, 2 inches

They are completely silent

They don't fly

They have nearly 3 times more protein than crickets

Nutrition Chart

Species……….Protein   

Dubia……..……36%   
Cricket…….….13%   
Superworm   ..20%   
Mealworm…..10%   
Silkworm…...64%   
Waxworm…..16%   

Not tried eating them yet but its in the pipeline

[Clansman]

Mealworms


I've ordered some mealworms and going to try farming my own.

The quail love them and as the crickets and Dubia beetles are way to big for them I needed something smaller.

So as the quail numbers are therefore feed costs are rising i'm going to look at this as cheap source of feeding not just for them but for the other birds too.

And apparently they are a bit of a delicacy for us humans too 

[Clansman]

They're here 

Bought 1Kg of them for £13 delivered and that was cheap!!

[Clansman]

The mealworm were put in a tank on base of whole wheat, they don't need water they get their moisture from the wheat.

They took a few months to change into the black beetles but are now all breeding and living in the same tank, I scoop out a load of worms, return the battles to the tank and strain them, they reduce the wheat to dust so its fairly easy to do.

I remove the dust every few months and they just carry on as before.

[Rosemary]

You have my undying admiration. Truly, you do. Just don't ask me round to your gaff for drinks and nibbles 

[Clansman]

Would you not try them just once? 

[Clansman]

even as a ground powder? 

[cloddopper]

 I'd eat them no probs ,     I'm just wondering what your drinks might be made of   

Thanks very very much, I found that exceedingly interesting and useful.

 I spent £18 three weeks ago to get a big tub of pond fish food . A tub lasts about seven months .
I have a detached office log cabin with power and plenty of space on the desk areas , as well as a large thermostatically heated propagation sand bed that tanks could sit on .

By the office there are  six x 100 litre bags of vermiculite & nearly 100 litres of ground up coir waste , as well as a big ice cream chest freezer in the garage running at minus 21 oC .

 Freecycle here I come  .....asking for old fish tanks before I try to make any .


Clansman ,
What sort of lighting levels do they need , I've three large red & blue LED grow lamps that I use for growing my seeds & cuttings that I can use if needed .

[Clansman]

Light doesn't seem to matter, they just get natural daylight through the window but they seem to be equally happy in the dark as they are in light.

[Bex]

Would love to see pics of the mealworm set up too

[Rosemary]

Would you not try them just once? 

Maybe witha nice garlic dip 

[cloddopper]

   Was talking to my lass a few minutes ago about growing them for our food , showed her the pictures of the food . 

Her last word .. Like most females she always has to have the last word,  was
 ****  OFF! 

 I start sorting out the space in the office tomorrow ........... perhaps .