Basic rules for breeding crickets at home

Keeping crickets at home

Crickets are grown in two cases - as “singers” and as live food for other pets.
It is quite easy to keep warblers in a container made of any material. The most convenient dimensions are 60x40 cm with a height of 30 cm. The bottom is covered with sawdust. There must be sticks, twigs and any other objects on which insects will climb and where they will hide.

If crickets are grown for food, then you can increase the usable area by filling the container 2/3 with empty cardboard egg boxes. Even sheets of crumpled paper will work as shelters.

Caring for insects consists of:

• maintaining the microclimate in the insectarium,
• cleaning it,
• and feeding pets.

The temperature range for keeping crickets is 28-37 0C. The higher the temperature, the more succulent food should be included in the diet of insects. Daylight should be about 16 hours, so additional lighting is required!

Many insect owners are faced with the question: what do crickets eat in their natural habitat? Let’s find out.

In an insectarium, as in nature, they eat everything - leftover fruits, vegetables, bread crumbs, oatmeal, various whiskeys, dry baby food will do. You can even give sweet corn sticks.

Lettuce leaves, burdock leaves, and tops of garden plants are very suitable as a source of plant fiber. In the summer you can put grass in the insectarium - crickets readily eat it.

Important! To raise sexually mature individuals suitable for reproduction, animal proteins must be present in the diet! Only a plant-based diet will result in the laying of dead eggs. To enrich the diet with proteins, you can use dry gammarus, egg white, fish meal

But you can’t overfeed with such food! This undermines the health of insects, complicates molting, and causes soft chitinous covers

To enrich the diet with proteins, you can use dry gammarus, egg white, and fish meal. But you can’t overfeed with such food! This undermines the health of insects, complicates molting, and causes softness of the chitinous covers.

Relevance of the topic

Keeping pets has always been popular in most families. But more and more often people want to stand out among their friends and have some kind of exotic pet. And while finding a suitable specimen is not difficult, establishing a constant supply of food can be problematic. Often, owners have to raise insects themselves to feed their pets.

There are also those who prefer to listen to the trills of crickets. They are also not averse to keeping several of these fauna representatives at home, which would create a special atmosphere right in a city apartment.

Asian cuisine is very popular around the world, and its dishes often include fried grasshoppers, crickets and other small animals. According to statistics, about 2 billion people on the planet eat insects at least periodically. And so you can breed such a product for them, since the exotic always turns out to be in price.

The advantage of this type of business is:

• Lack of competition; in our country and many neighboring countries (Ukraine, Belarus) there are still no serious cricket farms.
• Growing demand due to Asian cuisine and keeping exotic animals among hobbyists.
• Small investment at the start.
• Crickets are omnivorous and easy to feed.
• They are characterized by rapid reproduction and good fertility.
• It is not difficult to create conditions for maintenance; this does not require any technology, equipment, or equipment.
• Caring for insects is simple; even a large farm will need no more than 2-3 people to keep order.

The only difficulties that stand out are bureaucratic shortcomings, since our legislation does not yet have such an object for breeding or sale as crickets, cockroaches and other specific animals. But this can also be a plus, since practically no one controls or limits the owner of the farm.

You will have to take a more careful approach to this issue if you want to create specialized products, dietary supplements, based on protein flour. This product will be of interest to athletes and people who need a chitin diet, because it contains a huge amount of protein of natural origin. And scientists have already proven that it is very easily absorbed by the human body.

In this case, the difficulty lies in the fact that you will have to find investors for expensive research or engage in close cooperation with scientists and some university, on the basis of which relevant research can be carried out. Only after the issuance of a certain certificate can such products be distributed legally.

Cricket breeding

Each cricket’s territory is home to several females, who come to its burrow attracted by its song. A courtship dance and mating takes place, a few days after which the female lays eggs. They have a long ovipositor; the female uses it to pierce the soil to lay eggs there.

Lays 50-150 eggs per season. But if the conditions are favorable, the air temperature is about 30Cº, then the female lays up to 700 eggs. The eggs are white and shaped like a banana. House crickets can lay one egg at a time or in groups in different crevices.

Then, depending on the temperature, after 1-12 weeks, larvae - nymphs - are born. These larvae will go through 9-11 stages of development. At first, young individuals try to stay together, hiding from enemies under stones and in earthen burrows. After the third molt, the crickets become older and spread around the area in order to dig their own burrows. When cold weather sets in, the mink is made deeper to survive the winter.

Usually the temperature underground is not lower than +0Cº, and if minus happens, the cricket goes into hibernation. With the onset of warm May days, the insects come out and molt for the last time. After molting, they look very funny, with their white wings not straightened and not dried out. Adults live for about 1.5 months. Tropical species live 6-7 months.

In the summer, when day turns into evening, a characteristic chirping sound begins to be heard in the grass. This sound cannot be confused with anything else; it can only be produced by one insect - the cricket.

In warm weather, they live in nature and eat what they find, mainly plant foods. But in addition to plants, they happily eat small representatives of the class of invertebrates, which, unfortunately, come across in the path of crickets.

Also, crickets do not shy away from carrion. Like many insects, crickets exhibit cannibalism.

Mostly adults eat their fellows; they not only destroy young animals, but also devour clutches.

Crickets love the warm season; they cannot tolerate even a little cold. In cold weather, these insects often crawl into residential or industrial premises that are heated for the winter. Therefore, in the house in winter you can hear the singing of this insect.

Living in close proximity to people, this “bakery singer” (that’s what they were called because they used to live behind stoves) has no problems with food. Almost anything suits him: waste from fruits and vegetables, bread crumbs, that is, any small pieces of food.

Crickets have a particular preference for a variety of liquids. Those owners who have food left on the table have a real paradise for crickets. Warm air and a large amount of food are favorable conditions for the life of crickets.

Unfortunately, these baked musicians are becoming less and less common in homes today. Crickets, unlike cockroaches, avoid concrete multi-story buildings because it is impossible to dig a hole for shelter there. Therefore, you can only hear a cricket in a private house. But how long will this situation continue? Maybe soon there will be no more of them left in city houses.

In the old days, not all insects were valued, but individual insects were considered the true guardians of the hearth, a favorable sign for the future. Of course, the cricket, whose song personified peace and family well-being, also fell into the “pet” category.

Life cycle

Sexual differences in insects are manifested in the presence of a chirping apparatus in males and an ovipositor in females. The dimensions of the appendage are 10-15 mm; with its help, females lay eggs in the ground. The cricket is a type of insect with incomplete metamorphosis. This means that its development takes place in three stages:

• egg;
• larva;
• imago.

Larvae of species with incomplete metamorphosis have much in common with adults. For their appearance, a sufficient amount of moisture and high temperature are required. The female mates several times and lays eggs from 2 to 4 weeks, one at a time or in groups of 2-4 pieces. In total, up to 500 of them are buried. The number of surviving masonry depends on natural factors. Having emerged from the egg, the larva molts for the first time. During subsequent moults, the number of facets in the eyes and the length of the antennae increase, and wing primordia develop. It will take them 1-1.5 months to transform into an adult. How long do crickets live? The life cycle of most species takes only 3 months.

Cricket nutrition

Crickets feed on different “products”, depending on their habitat. In nature, they eat plant foods, and if they live near a person, they feed on leftovers from his table.

Especially liquids. In addition, the house cricket can eat invertebrates, corpse tissue and can be classified as cannibals - adult individuals can eat clutches and young larvae.

Sometimes crickets are specially raised at home, for the sake of their songs or as food for certain types of animals (amphibians, and other reptiles, as well as birds). Then they are fed with leftover fruits, vegetables, cat food, dry baby food, oatmeal, bread crumbs, and corn sticks.

Be sure to give plant food: burdock leaves, lettuce and tops of garden plants. Crickets also need protein, which they can get from fish meal and egg white. But such food should be given in moderation; insects should not be overfed, otherwise their chitinous coverings may become limp and molting will become more difficult.

Carrots, apples, cabbage are given grated on a coarse grater, little by little. Water is also necessary for insects, and if you breed crickets, you need to provide them with liquid. It is better not to place the drinking bowl in the insectarium, but to put a sponge soaked in water there. One of the large insectariums is located on the territory of the Moscow Zoo, where crickets are bred to feed various animals.

Relationships with a person

Cricket
A very difficult topic for cricket. In Japan, it was customary to keep these insects at home in miniature cages. In Asia they are specially bred for food; in North America they are used as bait. In Russia today, many exotic animal lovers keep reptiles that eat crickets. Owners of these cold-blooded animals, along with reptiles, usually breed crickets as food for their pets.

If a cricket suddenly appears in a multi-storey building in the city center, you can be sure that it has escaped from a pet reptile lover. Much less often such escapes occur from insect lovers due to the fact that they also prefer to keep exotic crickets.

Features of keeping crickets

Container

Option for arranging a container for crickets

If you decide to have such an original and noisy pet in your home (crickets make characteristic sounds, so immediately ask yourself if you are ready for this), make sure to purchase a fairly spacious container. Its size will depend on the number of pets and how comfortable conditions you are going to create for them. You can keep a whole thousand crickets in a container 450 by 425 and 500 centimeters, or even several. The difference will be in the level of comfort.

If the walls of the container are high, you don’t have to cover it, however, in order to avoid all sorts of troubles associated with finding a cricket under the bed or in the bathroom, it is better to take care of a special mesh lid.

The walls of the container should be smooth - it can be glass or plastic. This is necessary in order to prevent the pet from escaping vertically. Do not forget that crickets move very well and quickly on flat vertical surfaces.

If you are going to keep a cricket in a wooden box, then it is better to cover its inside walls with thin glass so that it is not so easy for the cricket to climb up them.

House

Even if you have taken care of a spacious container, do not forget about a special house. You can use egg cartons for this. Place it vertically with small pieces of cardboard between the sides. This will prevent the egg combs from sticking together and there will be good ventilation in the house. Crickets love to hide in such houses.

Substrate selection

At the bottom of the container you will need to pour... not substrate, but dry food. It could be oatmeal, dry baby food, gammarus... Some people add dry food for cats or dogs. True, there is a lot of debate regarding the usefulness of the latter, whether it is worth doing this. So, it's up to you to decide. You will need to place a feeder on top of the food layer. Its role can be played by a board or plywood - on it you will put a portion of wet food every day - carrot salad with apple, lettuce, burdocks, dandelions...

By the way, its appearance depends on the cricket’s diet. The more varied its diet, the more beautiful the cricket looks.

Temperature regime for keeping crickets

Egg tray houses

Crickets are heat-loving creatures and keeping them in a container where the temperature is below +26 degrees is not recommended. If the temperature column of the thermometer shows lower numbers, take care of artificially heating the air using a spot heating lamp.

In addition, additional ultraviolet light will promote the synthesis of vitamin D3 in crickets, which is also good for them.

Steps

Part 1

Where to begin

Buy several large containers or aquariums.

You will need a container or aquarium to house your crickets. The easiest way is to have at least two containers, in one the sexually mature producers will live, and in the other the growing young animals. Decide how many crickets you want to grow and purchase the appropriate size container(s).

• You need to be sure that your container or aquarium is large enough to support your colony of crickets. One of the biggest mistakes many people make when trying to raise crickets is using containers that are too small. When crickets breed in crowded conditions, they eat each other as they compete with each other for food. This is not what you need. So be sure to buy a container that is large enough!
• Buy a clean, large box with a tight lid to keep your crickets from escaping. Tall plastic storage boxes are a good choice. A 14 gallon (53 L) container can hold a colony of over 500 crickets, which can sit on egg trays. Smooth-sided boxes significantly reduce the number of escape attempts by crickets.

• Make your container breathable.

  For ventilation, cut one or two 6″ holes in the lid. Cover the top with mosquito netting to prevent the crickets from escaping as crickets can chew through the plastic netting. Use a hot glue gun to seal the mesh. Experiment with different ventilation options if you want more reliable temperature control.

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  Place vermiculite on the bottom of the container.

  Place 2.5 to 7.5 cm of vermiculite in the bottom of your box. This will provide the crickets with a substrate on which they can crawl, protect the container from the development of bacteria and reduce the unpleasant odor. If you have a large colony, vermiculite will need to be replaced every 1-6 months, so stock up on it for future use.

  Place a disposable plastic container filled with moist, loose topsoil in your box.

  Females need it to lay eggs in it. Try placing just a slightly higher layer of vermiculite so that the crickets can climb into the container. Make sure there are no fertilizers or pesticides in the soil.

• You can place netting on the surface of the soil to prevent crickets from digging through it and eating the eggs. Females can lay eggs through the mesh using a special oviposition organ (ovipositor).

Part 2

Beginning of the breeding process

1. Populate your colony and feed it.

   Place all your crickets in the container you have prepared for them. Away from the container with soil, place a shallow saucer with commercial cricket food or other food (shredded high-quality dry cat food works well).

   Be sure to give the crickets water.

   Crickets need constant access to water to live and thrive. Watch how the crickets crowd around the water droplets after you spray the container. Here are some unconventional ways to give crickets water, invented by people who keep them:

   • Try using an upside down reptile water bottle with a sponge in the reservoir. The sponge will prevent your crickets from drowning.

   Cut a cardboard toilet paper tube and unfold it to form a rectangle. Wrap it in some porous paper, such as a paper towel, and place it in the corner of the drinker so that it forms a kind of fortress.

2. A saucer of hydrogel (sold as a soil additive such as "polyacrylamide") or flavorless jelly will also be an excellent source of moisture.
3. Keep your crickets warm.

   Crickets need good heating in order to fully reproduce and incubate eggs. You can provide them with warmth in several ways, such as a reptile heater, thermal mat, or lamp. A heater placed inside the container will warm the contents along with your crickets and provide enough heat for the eggs to incubate.

   • Male crickets sing at temperatures between 12-37°C when they are ready to mate. Crickets feel best closer to the upper limit of this range: 26-32 °C.
4. Give crickets time to reproduce.

   If you give them enough food, water and warmth, your crickets will be happy and will thank you by breeding abundantly. Give them about two weeks to mate and lay eggs in the soil. To lay eggs, females can burrow 2.5 cm into the soil. After two weeks, the soil will be filled with small oblong eggs (about the size of half a grain of rice). Remove this soil and place it in a nursery container to incubate the eggs.

   • While the crickets are laying their eggs, keep the soil moist. If the eggs dry out, they will die. Fill a spray bottle with filtered water and mist the soil periodically to keep it moist and not dry out due to the heater.

Part 3

Completing the breeding process

1. Incubate the eggs.

   Before hatching, crickets need warmth to incubate their eggs. Place the disposable container in a larger box with a tight-fitting lid and place it in a warm place with a temperature of 29-32°C. After about two weeks (longer in cooler temperatures), hundreds of small crickets (cricket dust, "pinheads") the size of a grain of sand will begin to hatch from the eggs every day for two weeks.

2. Collect cricket dust and place in a separate growing container.

   This container must always have food and water in it so that the small crickets grow to adult size when they can be returned to the main container - this usually takes another 7-10 days.

   • Be sure to keep the soil in the growing container moist to ensure the crickets get enough moisture.

   Place the growing container on a thermal mat that provides a temperature of 26-32 °C.

3. Repeat the entire procedure.

   By following the steps above, you can get hundreds or thousands of crickets, enough to feed your animals and maybe even your friends' animals. Pretty soon you'll be a full-fledged cricket breeder! If your crickets are dying, pay attention to these things:

   • Not enough space. Crickets need adequate space to live and reproduce. If your crickets feel crowded, they will eat each other to balance the ecosystem.

   Not enough/too much water. Crickets need more water than you might think - misting the container and refilling the water bottle every few days is essential. At the same time, there is no need to drown your crickets in water. Regular spraying and water in the drinking bowl should be sufficient.

4. Not enough heat. Crickets like to live and breed in warm temperatures. Try to keep your container at optimal temperatures of 26-32 °C.

• Change the material in the drinker every two weeks or as it gets dirty. This will prevent the growth of bacteria in the water.
• Remove any dead crickets as other crickets will eat them and this can spread harmful bacteria and affect the entire colony.
• Weatherstrips that are used to seal windows and doors can be used to seal container lids to keep crickets from escaping.
• If you're low on food and water for your crickets, you can make up for both with a potato slice.
• A strip of tape placed inside the container under the lid will prevent your crickets from escaping because the tape is very slippery and crickets cannot crawl over it.
• Read additional literature on feeding and keeping crickets. This knowledge will help you achieve success in raising your crickets.
• You need to buy new crickets every six months to get this process going again. This reduces the risk of problems caused by inbreeding. This is also a good time to replace the vermiculite and soil with fresh ones.

“Where should we sell them, in the passage?”

While the oven warms up to 170 degrees, Sergei shares the intricacies of doing business in Belarus:

— Initially we took 16 thousand dollars. Our team consisted of three people: me, manager and breeding specialist Andrey, as well as our financial partner. Of course, the original plans differed from the outcome. I imagined that everything would be like in Russian companies: work with pet stores, beautiful packaging, barcodes, everything is official. As a result, it turned out that this was not in our budget at all. We built a farm, put up shelving, and that's when we ran out of money. What to do? They told us: “Sell crickets.” Okay, but where to implement it, in the transition?

And then we were faced with moving from one farm to another, after which winter came and the crickets froze. It cost us a pretty penny - we ended up spending 26 thousand dollars. Even when you lose 70% of your cricket and it takes 2-3 months to restore it, you still have to pay rent, salaries to your employees, taxes.

The legislative framework

To avoid unnecessary questions and problems, it is advisable to legalize any type of business. But with the breeding of crickets, nuances often arise at the level of unpreparedness of the laws for this type of activity. Thus, nowhere in Russian legislation can one find the creation of a cricket farm, like many others for breeding insects or exotic animals.

You can try to organize a personal subsidiary plot or register as an individual entrepreneur (individual entrepreneur). Then your activity will be legal. Of the OKVED codes, 01.49 is the most suitable - breeding of other animals, since this section provides for the cultivation of insects.

The remaining documents required to run a legal business will depend on the purpose for which you are raising crickets and to whom you are selling them. This may require a veterinary certificate or registration of dietary supplements, etc.

What to feed house crickets

You can feed crickets with a variety of vegetable crops and herbaceous plants. Carrots, beets, lettuce, and clover heads are perfect. It is also very advisable to add pork or chicken feed to the diet. It is worth feeding not in large portions, but often - at least several times a day.

• Since ancient times, crickets have been especially revered in China and Japan, in these countries they even organized special competitions for singing domestic crickets, and the rich people there were ready to give entire fortunes for the winners.
• Since ancient times, it was believed that having a cricket in the house brings good luck, prosperity, and well-being.
• According to recent research by scientists, the trills of crickets have a beneficial, calming effect on the human psyche. Only the purring of a domestic animal has a similar positive effect on a person.

Does the type of insect affect its diet?

Yes. These three species have slightly different diets. House crickets usually feed on human food scraps, clothing and paper. Since field species live outside, they usually feed on fruits (pears, apples), mushrooms and plants. Cave crickets typically feed on dead insects and fungi because they choose dark, damp places to live.

How often to clean the cricket container

To prevent bacteria and germs from multiplying in the container, it is recommended to clean your pet’s house at least 1-2 times a week. During this time, he should be placed in a temporary house. But if you notice that its abdomen is swollen, and an unpleasant odor emanates from the container itself, you should not limit yourself to cleaning alone. Your pet could become infected with microsporidia and you will need to disinfect its home.

Unsanitary conditions for keeping crickets encourage the development of mites, and this can lead to the death of your unusual creature. Therefore, do not ignore cleaning, and if you have already got a cricket, keep it not only comfortable, but also clean.

About project cost and profitability

Recently, my investor and I completed a business plan and studied sales markets.

Costs and payback. It turned out that the threshold for entering this market with all costs (purchase of necessary equipment, renting premises, purchasing inventory, repairs, etc.) is no more than $25,000, and the payback period (even if you divide the profit figures by two) is not more than a year. Even according to minimal estimates, the farm's income is about $100,000 per year. This already takes into account the minimum fixed prices for products, inflated prices for the implementation of the project and the purchase of everything necessary.

Our cost is very low. One kilogram of cricket, with all costs, costs no more than $2.

After monitoring the world market, according to preliminary estimates, we will be able to set the following prices for our products:

• Frozen crickets for food - at least $20
• In flour - now a 120 g bag. costs $10 (based on ebay). But, of course, we will do it cheaper - for popularization

One kilogram of cricket flour is no more than 8000 pieces. This means that in one box (crickets are kept in special boxes) about 2-3 kg of flour grows. There will be about 200 such boxes at launch.

Sales markets. The main thing for us is the sales market. But there are no problems with him. As long as we are given permission to start the food industry, we will sell crickets for feed, and the Russians will even take such a small volume, 800-1000 kg per month at $20 per kg, from us in bulk. The demand is real, we studied it. And there is also the Ukrainian market, where our products are also in demand. And our poultry farmers, hedgehog keepers and other lovers of exotic animals are now ordering frozen food from Russia.

Photo: Daria Buryakina, TUT.BY

In China, 27,000 tons of dried cockroaches are required per year for pharmacology and cosmetics production. Of these, only 21,000 tons are provided in full. One pound (about 0.5 kg) of dry cockroaches costs around $89 - a very good income. So you can open a cockroach farm right in China. This is also real - my companion studied the topic.

We already have a specific proposal from Canada: to build a farm there, organize work and train a management team. And we are seriously discussing this.

The legislation is much simpler for them; there are no barriers. They are now raising private businesses. The most expensive thing there are salaries, but if you consider that a farm of 250 m² requires only 3 workers, and the output is a ton of crickets per month, then this arrangement is quite suitable for them. There is only one difficulty there. There are cricket farms, but they only produce crickets for fishing and food. And the guys who contacted us want to breed them for food. And these are different conditions of detention and feeding. We know this and can implement it. I’m afraid that it will really turn out that our farm will appear in Canada earlier than in Belarus.

During this year, more than 49 farms were built in the world. And that's just crickets. So we are at the forefront.

And now the main thing is that we do not sit out this peak while waiting for our legislators. In Russia, too, legislation in this area has not yet been finalized; there are no sanitary requirements. But there are already farms there (albeit illegal ones) that employ 40 people - you can imagine the volume there.

Once we push through legislation, we will have very little time to fill the market. I think the country will be hit by a wave of legal insect farms.

Because it is many times more profitable and environmentally friendly than raising cows, pigs and chickens.

Growing insects as a business, report from the farm

In Asia, insects have long been eaten. This is not news, but still unusual for a European. When Russian tourists come to China or Thailand and see spots with fried insects on the market, the typical reaction is to take a photo or quickly move away. The bravest ones try it mainly for the sake of an unusual photograph for social networks. But since the locals eat them, it means they are grown somewhere. IQ Review visited a farm where crickets and butterfly pupae are raised for sale. Our report today is about the insect business.

This insect farm is located in Thailand in the Pattaya suburb of Huai Yai. It supplies products to local markets, where Thais and tourists from all over the world buy them.

Apparently, the beetle business is going well - land here is expensive. Of course, this is not the first line from the sea, but only 5 km. For comparison, a good home in this area costs $120,000. The owners' house is simple, combined with a farm. However, they have another piece of land at some distance, intended for breeding insects.

Mostly crickets are grown here for food. They are the ones rummaging around in the box in the photo. Here's the view from above.

Egg cells are used specifically. Insects gnaw holes in them and lay eggs, which fall to the next layer - this makes it easier to separate generations. They are fed pumpkin.

Here's a short video of what the farm looks like from the inside.

When the insects lay eggs, the larvae are separated directly from the cells and transplanted into separate boxes.

Insects grow quickly, a lot of them grow. This photo shows only a small part of what falls out of the cells when you shake them.

You may ask why insects don't try to escape from open boxes. Well, they don’t know that their original box is part of the business of growing them for food! They feel at home. All the conditions - warmth, as much light as needed and food - what more could a cricket want?

This video is not for the faint of heart. The box has been shaken a little, and the beetle catch is being prepared for sale.

Here is a bucket full of insects.

Next, the live goods are packaged and weighed. Here's how it happens.

The bugs scurry around in the bag... not for long. Like any living beings, without oxygen they suffocate. But it's for their own good. It's much better than dying in boiling oil.

In addition to crickets, butterfly pupae are sold here. They look like healthy larvae. We were not allowed to see the growing process. The goods were sold already dead.

SUMMARY

Raising insects costs next to nothing. Once you invest money in space and mesh boxes, you spend only on electricity and vegetables. The same customer base buys regularly. The product remains fresh for 2-3 days. There are several points selling insects in Pattaya. There are no millions here, but the demand is stable.

Additionally, you can raise chickens. It is not profitable to buy insects to feed poultry and livestock. A kilo of beetles costs $3, and a kilo of rice costs less than $1. But for homestead farming it is quite suitable. Visually, the owners of this business live well: they have iPhones and an indispensable attribute of the Thai middle class - a new pickup truck. Even 2 pickups.

We went to the farm with the owner of a small shop selling fried insects. After the purchase we were given a business card - come again!

Ananya bought a nearby market stall with bugs. The family business of the previous owners was going well, but not well enough to support all five family members. As a result, they quarreled and decided to sell their point.

About 3 kg of insects are sold per day - fried crickets and butterfly pupae. Their purchase price is $10. A plate of approximately 80 grams costs $0.6. The only expenses for cooking are oil, sauce and gas for frying. The outlet sells not only fried beetles, so it is not possible to calculate exact figures on profit and profitability.

The larvae are rich in protein. They taste like seeds. Bon appetit!

My team

At the same time, I was looking for a team. I decided on an investor (after all, he was the person who “asked a lot of questions”). There was also a partner ready to start selling. But I understood that to create a full-fledged farm, I needed specialists in a specific field. I contacted the guy I bought my first crickets from. It turned out that he had been doing them for more than 15 years. And for the last 10 years he has been breeding exotic animals and spiders. The question regarding the candidacy of a technologist was removed. I don’t need a novice scientist who only knows from books what and how - I needed a specialist who has practical experience and understands the topic.

For example, with the help of my work and that of Andrey (technologist), we were able to develop our own “secret” compound feed for crickets. And this is a very important point. Crickets are polyphagous: they eat both insects and plant foods. And the lack of a protein component gives rise to cannibalism - it is very unprofitable for us for them to eat each other. We solved this issue with the help of compound feed that contains protein. And also secret ingredients, without which mass breeding of crickets is hardly possible.

It's like Coca-Cola - no one knows the recipe. Until ours is “deciphered”, we have some time to spare in case of an invasion of people who want to open similar farms - and I’m sure this will happen.

So, I have a team: me, an investor, a sales specialist and a technologist. And this is the best team I could ever imagine. The technologist immediately began to develop conditions for the mass keeping of crickets and other inhabitants of the farm (and we plan to breed also zofobas beetles and mealworms). I started working on a business plan and, together with the investor, we began to push through legislation.

We immediately decided that all team members would have a share in the business - in my opinion, this is the best motivation. And the main thing that unites us all: we all want not just to open a farm, but to create a brand called Crickets.by. By the way, I completely wrote the site a year ago and made it myself. While it is purely informative, I will popularize the topic through it.

Photo from the personal archive of Sergei Makarov

Legends and beliefs about crickets

So, the cricket family belongs to the order Orthoptera, and in nature there are about 2,300 species. These insects consider a moderate humid climate to be a favorable habitat, and their historical homeland is the island of Madagascar and India. However, today these night “singers” are widespread throughout the world; moreover, numerous legends and beliefs are often associated with them.

Many crickets fly into the house and settle in secluded places, and some species are considered exotic and turn into real human pets. This is not surprising, because there is an opinion that such insects appear only in those homes where there is a feeling of kindness, comfort and coziness. So this is a positive symbol for the future, and you should not kick the cricket out of your abode.

The domestic cricket gets along well in the same territory with humans, does not cause any difficulties and, moreover, does not harm in its own habitat. He only sings, and there is no doubt that he is the strongest male of all competitors. Females prefer to remain silent in the presence of the leader, and weak males are simply expelled from the home. So it’s the same melody, which very soon becomes familiar and even positive.

Habitats

The habitat of the domestic cricket is very wide; they can be found all over the world, in many European countries (including our Ukraine), in North Africa, Asian countries and even in southern Australia. But in American

Crickets were once not found on the continent, but they were successfully brought there by European settlers.

Their favorite habitats are human dwellings (hence the prefix “home” to the name of crickets), warm basements, warehouses, and heating power lines. During the warm season, crickets can live outside human buildings.

Insect nutrition

In their natural environment, crickets feed on fresh grass shoots and bush leaves. Having settled on the site and significantly increased the population, they will begin to harm garden crops. Adults prefer to nibble on seedlings rather than weeds. Their diet is not limited to plant foods; insects require protein for development. Its source is small insects, corpses or their own offspring.

What does a cricket eat when it finds itself at home? In this case, he shows omnivorousness, eating crumbs of bread, droplets of liquid dishes and drinks, pieces of vegetables and fruits with equal pleasure. Meat or fish that falls on the floor will also be eaten by the little neighbors. Showing the instincts of a hunter, they can catch flies or small invertebrates that end up in the house.

Many seemingly harmless insects turn out to be a source of danger, so the question often arises: do crickets bite? You can rest assured about night singers, they don’t bite people. The jaws of the gnawing type are not adapted for attacking large objects; moreover, aggressiveness is shown only towards males in foreign territory.

House cricket (house cricket) - description, appearance, characteristics.

House crickets are fairly small insects. The size of the slender, slightly flattened body, covered with a hard chitinous shell, in adult individuals ranges from 16 to 26 mm in length. The color of the domestic cricket can be grayish-yellow, straw-fawn or various shades of brown with streaks, specks or spots of indeterminate shape.

On the head of the cricket, which resembles a flattened egg in shape, 3 dark arcuate stripes are clearly visible. The small eyes located on its sides have a complex facet structure. The mouthparts of crickets are of the gnawing type in structure. The antennae, consisting of several segments, are an organ of touch. Often their size is slightly greater than the length of the cricket's body.

The rear pair of well-developed membranous wings helps house crickets easily fly from place to place. At rest, the cricket's wings lie along the abdomen and resemble long, sharp tails. If necessary, house crickets can travel quite long distances. When the insect is on the ground, its wings are reliably protected from damage by dense elytra that lie flat on the back, with the right one slightly overlapping the left.

Like all orthoptera, the house cricket has 3 pairs of legs. The hind legs have thickened thighs and are designed to perform fairly long jumps. It is noteworthy that the hearing organs of these insects are located on the shins of the front pair of legs. The paired appendages located on the last segment of the abdomen are quite long and resemble peculiar antennae sticking out in different directions.

Sexual dimorphism is expressed in the presence of a special sound apparatus in male crickets, which is similar in structure to the sound apparatus, but differs from it in greater complexity and a different arrangement of components. The stridulatory vein, which functions as a closure, is located on the right elytra, and the vein against which it rubs is located on the left elytra. When they rub against each other, the familiar trill of a cricket appears. In crickets, the sound apparatus is more developed and occupies a larger area than in grasshoppers.

Female crickets have an ovipositor at the very end of their abdomen, shaped like a spear. Its length ranges from 11 to 15 mm. With the help of this organ, females dig holes in the soil into which fertilized eggs are laid.

The average lifespan of a house cricket rarely exceeds 3 months.

Description and area of ​​residence

The true cricket is a typical representative of the family of Orthoptera jumping insects. Its close relatives are grasshoppers and locusts. The insect has an elongated body, a large head, and a gnawing type mouthparts. The antennae are long, thread-like, and vision is well developed. The hind legs with thickened thighs allow them to push off when jumping.

The elytra are dense, leathery, the wings are fan-shaped with veins. Females have an ovipositor, which they use to cut through stems to lay eggs. Few people know what a cricket looks like, but they have heard its chirping at dusk. It creates its trills by rubbing the elytra. The faster the vibration, the higher the sound. The special structure of the elytra makes it possible to produce sounds in a wide range.

The insects are widespread in Asia, Europe, North Africa and America. In Australia they are found only in Adelaide, where they were introduced from other countries. They find cracks for housing, dig holes or hide under stones. Activity falls in the summer months, because at temperatures below +21 0 insects become lethargic and stop feeding. The love of warmth forced crickets to seek refuge in human habitation. With the onset of autumn, they move into houses, heated warehouses and industrial buildings.

Breeding crickets

Crickets can also be bred at home - important for those who consider them as food. The main thing is to create the right and comfortable living conditions for them, and to have a small colony where there will be males and females. There should be more females than males. For 1 male there are 4-5 females. Otherwise, you will witness crickets fighting and they will sing very loudly. So that your neighbors will definitely ring your doorbell.

A small container 4-5 centimeters deep filled with a damp substrate is placed in a container with adult crickets - this time the substrate is earth, sand, or peat. It could even be wet food. Female crickets are not very fussy when laying eggs.

It is better to cover the top of the container with a fine mesh with cells, so that later, when the female lays eggs, adult crickets will not eat them.

Female crickets lay eggs in portions of 2-5 pieces. One clutch can contain from 350 to 900 eggs. So your population will increase rapidly. Depending on the temperature conditions, after 1-2 weeks, cricket dust will appear - babies 1-2 millimeters in size. Over the course of several months, they will grow and molt until they reach sexual maturity. Then they will be ready to reproduce.

In the summer, when day turns into evening, a characteristic chirping sound begins to be heard in the grass. This sound cannot be confused with anything else; it can only be produced by one insect - the cricket.

In warm weather, they live in nature and eat what they find, mainly plant foods. But in addition to plants, they happily eat small representatives of the class of invertebrates, which, unfortunately, come across in the path of crickets.

Also, crickets do not shy away from carrion. Like many insects, crickets exhibit cannibalism.

Mostly adults eat their fellows; they not only destroy young animals, but also devour clutches.

Crickets love the warm season; they cannot tolerate even a little cold. In cold weather, these insects often crawl into residential or industrial premises that are heated for the winter. Therefore, in the house in winter you can hear the singing of this insect.

Living in close proximity to people, this “bakery singer” (that’s what they were called because they used to live behind stoves) has no problems with food. Almost anything suits him: waste from fruits and vegetables, bread crumbs, that is, any small pieces of food.

Crickets have a particular preference for a variety of liquids. Those owners who have food left on the table have a real paradise for crickets. Warm air and a large amount of food are favorable conditions for the life of crickets.

Unfortunately, these baked musicians are becoming less and less common in homes today. Crickets, unlike cockroaches, avoid concrete multi-story buildings because it is impossible to dig a hole for shelter there. Therefore, you can only hear a cricket in a private house. But how long will this situation continue? Maybe soon there will be no more of them left in city houses.

Farm at home

There is also the opposite side of the coin. Fishermen and reptile lovers are often forced to independently breed these insects at home in terrariums. Not every reptile agrees to eat frozen dead food, and the cost of such food in a pet store can ruin lovers of rare animals.

The optimal combination of insects is 1 male to 5 females. When there is an overabundance of males, fierce fights arise between them, which leads to injuries among the breeders. A male that has lost its elytra is unable to produce mating trills and becomes unsuitable for breeding.

Females are provided with a moist substrate for laying eggs. Containers with the substrate are covered with a mesh with a mesh size of 2 mm. The net is needed to prevent insects from digging up and eating the eggs. In favorable home conditions, the female lays 200-500 eggs, shaped like a banana.

The humidity of the substrate must be carefully monitored. When dry, the white eggs dry out and become transparent. This means the death of the masonry. In the case of a dry substrate, the female may try to lay eggs in the drinker. In this case, the masonry will also die.

The house cricket is an insect with an incomplete metamorphosis cycle. There are only three stages in its development:

• egg;
• nymph;
• imago.

The pupal stage is eliminated. The nymph is very similar to the adult, but lacks wings. The nymph has 9-11 stages of development. That is, young domestic crickets will molt 9-11 times.

At home, egg development lasts 10 days, so containers with substrate must be replaced every decade. The fry that emerge from the eggs must be fed with soft protein food, placing the food in a container with low sides. You also need to provide young domestic crickets with water. Wick drinkers are suitable for this.

Depending on the room temperature, the development of house crickets lasts 40-60 days or more. After completing the development cycle, they are suitable for feeding domestic reptiles.

This material tells about what a cricket eats, where it lives and how it can serve humans. Perhaps it will help those who decide to keep these insects at home in an insectarium.

breeding crickets at home.

Nutritional Features

Today, modern man has been able to tame even such a small insect as a cricket. The purpose of his breeding was melodic tunes, which he produces with particular regularity. In order to raise a full-fledged individual at home and count on offspring, you need to know the rules of nutrition and tirelessly follow the recommendations below.

So, crickets are omnivores, so it is quite acceptable to experiment with the menu, adding or removing new dishes each time. Leftover fruit is considered a favorite delicacy, and you can give food that is not the freshest. Crickets will definitely be grateful for such vitamins, especially since they are not particularly selective in their food consumption.

In addition, you can pamper the insect with oatmeal and crackers, which they will happily eat. Any crumbs will be welcome, and the cricket doesn’t need much to feel full and start singing its catchy trill again. The diet may also contain coarse fiber in the form of a bunch of dry grass to normalize intestinal function.

So it is important to observe all these subtleties and not deviate from the diet suggested above

If you decide to grow crickets at home, you can use an old aquarium as a house, with an even layer of soil and substrate placed on the bottom. The presence of branches and dry grass is also necessary, otherwise the trill of the insect will not be heard.

Soft caterpillars and pupae can also make up the cricket's daily menu, but it is advisable to offer such ingredients in strictly limited quantities for the normal functionality of the digestive system. Insects also love leaves of all plants, dandelions, unripe grass seeds and clover leaves.

If it is crickets that are bred at home, then the adults feed well from the feeder, while it is advisable for the young to distribute food over the entire surface of the soil

Over time and as individuals grow older, the need for this disappears, but at first it is important to control so that the inexperienced insect does not starve

Now on the free market, special plant-based foods predominate, which provide a full range of minerals, vitamins and microelements

The presence of protein as the main organic compound is very important, since a deficiency of this element leads to the non-viability of laid eggs. Moreover, the female quickly eats them, so it is best to use boiled chicken protein in the diet

Many crickets, accustomed to living at home, eat synthetic food from fish, dogs and cats, and such an unusual diet in no way affects their viability or reproductive function. Milk can be offered as a drink, but this is at the choice of the breeder himself.

Cricket lifestyle

All crickets require warmth to live. They rarely settle in apartments, since in the spring and autumn the heating is turned off, and the apartment becomes cold for these insects. Therefore, they prefer to choose their home in stores, at heating units, in bakeries, and boiler rooms.

It is almost impossible to see a cricket during the day, since its activity occurs at night. During daylight hours, they sit in crevices and secluded dark corners, and only at night can they be detected by sound.

There is a sign that if a cricket appears at home, it is good

Adult males control their territory, making daily rounds and checking it for the presence of rivals. If a stranger gets in the way, the crickets will inevitably fight. During a fight, they try to bite off each other's paws and antennae, and hit their thick heads. The winner may even eat the loser.

This spectacle is quite exciting to watch, so in some countries they even organize cricket fights. They have developed a special diet for fighting insects, cold medicines, and provide them with meetings with females to maintain morale.

Features of cricket

The main feature of this insect is its ability to chirp. Only males who use their vocal abilities in the interests of procreation are capable of this.

The familiar sound of a cricket is a kind of “serenade” for the female

First, the cricket lures the female, indicating its readiness to mate. Then he sings serenades to her, this is the period of courtship. Well, with the third type of signal, male crickets drive away competitors.

The sound is produced by rubbing the teeth of one elytra against the chirping cord of the other. The elytra rise and by their trembling form sharp vibrating movements, which are the source of sound.

Externally, crickets are similar to, but larger. The largest species living in our country is the field cricket, 2-2.6 cm in size, black with orange spots on the elytra and orange thighs.

The entire body of the insect is covered with a chitinous shell, which protects it from damage and reduces moisture loss. There are domestic, field and tree crickets, which differ in appearance. But everyone's songs are equally good.

Feeding frequency

Dry food should be present to insectaries at all times.

To avoid rotting, it is better to give succulent food (carrots, apples, cabbage, rutabaga) 1-2 times a day, after grating it on a coarse grater. A small portion, placed on a bowl, is left in the insectarium for an hour to an hour and a half, and then removed. At the next feeding, a new batch of grated feed is prepared. The same goes for pieces of meat.

Recommendation: water should always be freely available to insects. However, you should not put a drinking bowl in the insectarium - young crickets can drown in it. It is much more convenient to use a foam sponge soaked in water. You need to make sure it doesn't dry out!

Cricket Reproduction

Crickets have polygamous relationships, each male is the owner of a certain territory, which is inhabited by several females who are part of a kind of harem of this male. If another male encroaches on the territory of this male, fierce fights occur between them.

An obligatory attribute of the mating games of these insects is the famous trills of crickets, performing their musical serenades, the male attracts the female for mating.

Crickets breed throughout the year, but their peak sexual activity occurs in the summer. A fertilized female cricket prepares holes in the ground where she lays her eggs, somewhat similar to bananas. During one oviposition, a female cricket can lay from 40 to 179 eggs.

After one to two months (depending on the temperature and the environment in general), larvae begin to emerge from the eggs. The larva in its appearance resembles an adult cricket, but in order to become one, it will have to go through 10 molts, occurring over 7 weeks, during which the body undergoes restructuring. After the last molt, the larva produces a normal, mature cricket.

Warnings

• Keep an eye out for pests on your crickets such as mold, mites, flies and bacteria. Take precautions to prevent the emergence and development of these pests to keep your colony healthy.
• Sooner or later, some crickets will manage to escape. If you don't want crickets living freely in your home, set up traps.
• Use only soil that is free of fertilizers and pesticides. Otherwise, your crickets, their eggs and your pets may be poisoned.
• Male crickets make a lot of noise during mating displays. Therefore, make sure to find them a place where they cannot be heard.
• Don't overwater. Keep the drinking bowl filled, but make sure the air humidity is not too high. This will prevent the appearance of mold, mites and flies.
• 50 crickets can produce over 2,000 young crickets during their life cycle. You may end up with so many crickets that you won't know what to do with.
• Newly hatched crickets are about the size of a grain of sand, so you want to make sure they can't escape. (They are not able to climb glass or clear plastic)

Crickets are jumping orthoptera insects, they are also mistakenly called grasshoppers. Sounds are produced by rubbing the elytra. Moreover, only males emit them, scaring away other males or inviting females to mate. This type includes:

• Real;
• Field;
• Brownies;
• Stem Far Eastern;
• Ants;
• Common ant lover.

The tropics are considered the homeland of crickets. Although many species have adapted and can live anywhere. For example, the field cricket feels great in the steppe or forest-steppe zone. This rather noticeable insect with a black, seemingly polished body can settle very close to human habitation. House view

and can even live in an artificial environment next to a person.

Picture

The most common species is the house cricket

. It has more than 2000 varieties. The body length of an adult is about 2−2.5 cm, dense, brown or gray-brown in color. The elytra are short, the wings protrude from under them in the form of folded cords. Raising their elytra, the crickets very quickly rub them against each other, emitting a musical trill. They have three pairs of legs. The hind ones are the most powerful, with their help the insect makes long jumps.

Crickets do not live long; on average, adults age and die at 2 months of age. To reach maturity, they need to survive 10 moults over 1-1.5 months. It all depends on the ambient temperature. The total is 3-4 months of life. Wild tropical species can live for about six months. Wild field species live the longest, about a year, and this is due to the fact that they have to hibernate.

Crickets prefer humid climates and high temperatures. Therefore, as soon as the outside temperature drops, they settle in more comfortable conditions, for example, in a house behind a stove or behind a heating radiator. In the natural environment, they settle in crevices, under stones, and in secluded burrows. To breed them at home you will need a terrarium.

The cricket allows only females to enter its territory. Usually one male invites 3-4 females with his singing. After the date, they look for a place to lay eggs. This is usually a soft, loose substrate. One female lays on average up to 600 eggs. The time of their development is affected by the ambient temperature. It usually takes from 2 to 3 weeks

. Insects hatched from eggs resemble adults in appearance, only smaller in size and lacking wings.

What does it eat?

At home, they eat leftover human food and other insects. In nature, their food is varied: they feed on plants, smaller insects, are prone to cannibalism, and eat young animals. Those who are interested in breeding these insects know that the clutch of eggs must be separated from the adults in order to avoid cases of cannibalism. Crickets in their natural environment

and themselves often serve as food for larger insects, amphibians, lizards, birds and other predators.

If a “baked musician” appeared in the house, it was considered a good omen, a sign of prosperity, a talisman against poverty and crop failure. It was impossible to kill the insect; on the contrary, it was necessary to feed it and appease it.

In China and Japan, they even built separate houses for them and hung them in the middle of the house so that they could enjoy their singing.

However, although the trill of a cricket in the house is a favorable omen, people are increasingly trying to get rid of the house musician by all means.

You can fight crickets, like other insects, with insecticides. This measure is suitable for rooms where large populations of crickets are observed. One “singer” can be caught using a cloth, a jar or a box. They begin to make sounds at dusk, so using a flashlight beam you can detect the source in the dark and cover it, moving it into a closed container.

You can use a sticky cricket trap

. To do this, place it behind the radiator or under the window. You can lure and remove the insect using a special molasses syrup, leaving this product in the container overnight and often changing it to fresh one. The unique smell of this product attracts them very much.

If the owners of the apartment do not want the “illegal” residence of a musical guest performer again, some precautions against insects should be taken:

Do you think that the list of exotic pets suitable for home keeping is limited to? Well, you are wrong. Today it is becoming popular to keep... a cricket in the house in a small wicker cage or container. And in China there is even a tradition (since the 12th century) of organizing fights between these creatures. True, now cricket fights are a rarity, and it is unlikely that an ordinary tourist will be able to see them, but he can buy such a pet for 25 cents along with a wicker cage at the local bazaar. These creatures also appear in domestic pet stores. And if you are interested in the cricket as a potential contender for a place in your home and heart, or perhaps you are considering it as pasture for another exotic pet, it will be useful for you to learn about the features of keeping it at home.