How to Breed Crickets to Feed to Your Reptiles

Materials and directions to start breeding your own crickets:

- A container. (I use the five gallon buckets you can find at your local hardware store. Be sure to get a couple of them! You can also use an aquarium, a rubbermaid container, a garbage can ect. A 20 gallon container will hold 1000 crickets easily.)

- Heat source. (Clamp on lamps are perfect for this. Crickets need heat and clamp on lamps will easily clamp on to the side of your container. Babies can be kept at a temperature around 77F and adults are fine when the temperatures are around 86F. 25 and 50 watts are great for the lightbulb.)

- Lid. (If your container is not tall enough and you think your crickets will jump out of it easily, make a lid. You can use skinny wire mesh or even a cloth secured with a huge rubberband. Some people get really tall containers so they don't have to put a lid on it. Whatever lid you choose to use, make sure there is enough airflow. Crickets need to stay warm and dry not to mention be able to breathe.)

- Crickets. (The Gray Cricket (Gryllotalpa vulgaris) is the common cricket you'll find at pet stores. To start breeding, you need a generous supply of crickets. I suggest buying them in bulk via the internet or just go to a pet store and get as many crickets as you can. It is hard to breed when you only have, say, 10 crickets to work with. You also need to make sure you have males AND females. You can easily tell the difference by looking at the rear of the cricket. Males have two extrusions while the female has three, one of which is in the middle. This is called the ovipositor and is used to lay the eggs.)

-Substrate. (Soil and peat moss are great choices.)

-Egg flats/cartons. (Normally when you go to the pet store, you'll see that in the cricket's container there are egg cartons. They love these. Use paper ones.)