Herptiles.net - Taking Care of Crickets

Taking Care of Crickets
Christina Miller

Last update: Tuesday, February 5, 2008.

Crickets are probably the most common feeder choice for captive reptiles and amphibians. They are bred in the millions by commercial breeders, and are available in bulk or by the unit from breeders or pet stores. Losing crickets to unsuitable care can be costly, and healthy, nutritious prey leads to a healthy predator, so proper care is essential.

Natural history and anatomy

The House Cricket or Gray Cricket, Acheta domesticus, is originally a European species. They are insects of the order Grylloptera (or Orthoptera, depending on the reference), (Kuperus and Chapco, 1996) a group shared with grasshoppers, which have specialized strong rear legs for hopping.

Like all insects, they have a tough exoskeleton made up of a chitinous shell in 18 body segments, also called tagmata. They have two antennae, six legs in-total, two large compound eyes and three small ocelli. There are two small filaments called cerci at the tip of the abdomen, a long, dark ovipositor is located between the cerci in females.

Only adult male crickets produce chirping sounds, an action known as stridulation. They accomplish this by rubbing the inside edges of their forewings together. Despite the wings being functional, they have undeveloped flight muscles and cannot fly.

Crickets undergo eight larval stages, called instars, before reaching adult size about 48 days later. Each instar is marked by a molting of the exoskeleton, this process is called ecdysis but differs from ecdysis in reptiles. This life history is called gradual metamorphosis, or hemimetabolous metamorphosis. Adult crickets will live an average of two months.

Crickets are omnivores, and are not too picky about what they eat. They seek out warm places to feed and reproduce, and are mainly active at night.

Caring for crickets

A suitable enclosure for crickets is something that is easy-to-clean, has ample ventilation, and most importantly, is escape-proof. A 10 gallon aquarium with a locking screen lid, a plastic terrarium-style small animal cage, or a plastic storage bin with a tight-fitting lid. The last item needs to be modified by placing a screen portion on the lid or by drilling many small holes to allow for adequate ventilation. Without good ventilation, moisture will accumulate inside the container, and this promotes mould growth.

Easy cage furniture for crickets can be paper towel or toilet paper rolls, and cardboard egg crate. These are cheap and replaceable, and offer much-needed hiding spots for crickets. Crickets need enough surface area so that crickets do not have to pile on top of each other.

The cage floor is easiest to clean if left bare. Substrate tends to add more work to cleaning, and can hold odours.

Crickets should always have access to water. Not providing water is probably a big reason crickets die prematurely. But, crickets easily drown even in very shallow water. To prevent crickets from drowning, there are several methods for providing water:

Provide a shallow water dish with small pebbles or gravel, so that crickets may drink while walking in the dish
Soak a sponge in water, and place in the cricket bin; re-wet daily and replace the sponge often (it will be a breeding ground for bacteria and other microbes)
Water gel is available from many pet stores and supply dealers: This eliminates any chance of the crickets drowning, and often there are supplements added to the mix; however, it is unknown if there are any long-term health effects on the predator

Fresh food should be offered daily. Crickets will cannibalize if they are not fed adequately!

This plastic storage bin has been modified for cricket-keeping. A portion of the lid has been cut out and replaced with aluminum screen. Duct tape was used to seal the screen to the plastic.

"Furniture" is important for crickets to hide in.

Cleaning

Cleanliness is key to keeping crickets healthy, reducing the odour of the cricket bin, and preventing mould from accumulating in the colony. Remove uneaten food and dead crickets daily to avoid spoilage. Crickets naturally have a distinct odour, but they will smell very offensive if a lot of waste accumulates in the bin. Changing the furniture often will also keep the bin clean and reduce the odour.

Scrub the bin down with hot, soapy water in-between crickets. A lot of organic waste will stick to the inside, it is important to start clean with each new batch of insects brought home.

If you find mould in your cricket bin, discard the entire colony. Insects fed mouldy food have been attributed to health problems in herps, it is suspected to be very harmful. (Hernandez-Divers, 2006)

Gut loading

Crickets need to be fed nutritious foods before being fed to your herp, because you are what you eat. Pet stores and wholesalers often feed their crickets a basic, "maintenance" food that is easy to provide, like carrots or potatoes. Herps cannot thrive on the nutrients that are found in carrots and potatoes alone.

One nutritional issue in particular is the insects' calcium content: Many insects like crickets naturally have a very poor calcium content. Herps need to have a certain amount of calcium in their diets, and 1.5 to twice as much calcium to phosphorus (both are important mineral nutrients) in the diet to stay healthy and avoid calcium-related metabolic diseases. Without gut-loading or supplementing crickets prior to feeding, they do not contain enough calcium to keep a herp healthy in the long run.

Good nutrition comes from somewhere, this is where gut loading comes in. Gut loading will ensure that the insect itself has a healthy variety of nutrients, and that the gastrointestinal tract will contain a variety of nutrients when the cricket is eaten. Crickets should be fed a well-balanced diet at least 24-48 hours before feeding to the predator. "Well-balanced" means providing a variety of nutrients. Common gut loading "recipes" include using chicken mash, a variety of chopped vegetables (dark, leafy calcium-rick greens like collard, dandelion and turnip are excellent choices), flaked fish food and commercial pre-made gut loads. A single food item should not be relied on- feeding a variety of foods will ensure a variety of nutrients reaches your herp. Supplementation may still be necessary to increase the nutritional value of crickets fed to your herps.

Feeding crickets to your herps

Insectivorous herps can typically be fed as many crickets as they can consume in a 10-15 minute period (during the herp's normal activity cycle), then the remainder of the crickets are removed from the herp's enclosure. This is a general guideline, other methods can certainly work well, and depending on the herp's mode of hunting (active forager versus sit-and-wait ambush predator) this method can vary. Sick, debilitated animals may benefit from being fed crickets using forceps (tweezers), from a dish, or be fed another food item that is easier to catch.

Adding supplements to crickets is simple. Take a container, add a small portion of powdered supplements, add the crickets and shake gently to coat them. Herpers often call this "shake and bake." Crickets will clean the supplements from themselves within a few hours, so it is important to be feeding crickets when the animal is normally active.

Variety!

Even well-fed and properly supplemented crickets should never be the only food in any herp's diet. Insectivorous herps will eat dozens to thousands of different species of invertebrate in the wild, all of which have varying nutritional contents. Restricting your herp's diet to one type of prey is comparable to restricting your own diet to one type of food (but taking multivitamin pills as "supplements"). There is a variety of feeder invertebrates available, take advantage of it!

Crickets as a source of parasites

The idea that crickets can give pinworm to herps is a myth. Crickets do not carry any species of pinworm that can be transmitted to your herp. A study was performed that analyzed 2500 crickets purchased from five different cricket-producing facilities, and no pinworm eggs were found. (Klarsfield and Mitchell, 2005) Pinworms, or oxyurids, are very host-specific, meaning they prefer to live and reproduce in one type of animal.

Loose crickets?

Cricket escapees can be a nuisance in the house. They are attracted to warm areas like behind the refrigerator or washing machine, which also happen to be places that are not easy to access! Placing sticky traps meant for cockroach or earwig control works just as well for trapping stray crickets.