# For those of you who need pinheads, or want to breed crickets L@@K



## Link (Feb 28, 2010)

For those of you who have one or two very small slings, or wants to get some free crickets, I have a very clean way to breed crickets to get a small amount (100+) of pinheads.

Okay.  Most of us use large crickets for one thing or another, right?  But pinheads are so very hard to find!

Well, what I do to get pinhead crickets is take several large female crickets from the pet store.  The females will in all likelihood already be carrying sperm, since they have been kept with hundreds of other males.  Anyway, I put them in a small Tupperware container with an inch or two of moist peat moss.  Then, you leave them in there for 2 or 3 days.  The females will have laid their eggs in the enclosure after this time.  If you want _tons_ of babies, you can repeat this process several times before the first eggs hatch to get cricket egg laiden soil.  The pinheads will hatch in a week or two depending on temperature.  

When they hatch, make sure there is something for them to eat, and moisture precipitating on the walls.  I usually put a piece of carrot in there, and they do fine off of that since it doesn't rot quickly.  If you put anything in there that molds, the pinheads will die.  This is a great way to get hundreds of pinhead crickets for FREE.

You can also raise them for as long as you aren't tempted to feed them to slings.  Crickets eat anything, and as long as there isn't any mold, they will live to adulthood.  I usually parcel out 30 or so pinheads to their own seperate enclosures in order to keep them spread out.  If there are too many in a confined space, they will tend to cannibilize, and you will end up with less but larger crickets.  Haha.

Here are what the female crickets look like.







You may be thinking, that looks like any other cricket.  No... Look at the posterior aspect of the abdomen.  That black needle looking thing is called an ovipositor.  It is what it uses to deposit eggs.  You can tell it is an adult, because it has wings.  Also, females do not chirp.  The males do.  Also, males are smaller, and do not have the ovipositor.  If the abdomen is nice and fat, you can be sure it is a gravid female.  Choose those for your little pinhead colonies, and you will have lots of them!

I hope you found this helpful.

God bless,

Aaron


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## Exo (Feb 28, 2010)

People have been doing this for YEARS, but I guess it never hurts to post it incase a couple of people don't know or something.


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## robd (Feb 28, 2010)

I actually gave this a shot when I first got into the hobby, before I got myself a supply of roaches. I used the below video as a tutorial, very similar.

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/772974/how_to_breed_crickets/

It didn't work for me. I had the crickets laying eggs, but thinking back on it, I don't think I separated the females and I also don't think I used a sealed tuperware.

I might give it a shot again the next time I buy crickets.


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## Link (Feb 28, 2010)

Exo said:


> People have been doing this for YEARS, but I guess it never hurts to post it incase a couple of people don't know or something.


Haha.  Well, that makes me feel stupid. :wall:  Haha.  I honestly thought that I thought of this all on my own.  I know pet stores breed crickets, but I thought this method was my own entirely.



robd said:


> I actually gave this a shot when I first got into the hobby, before I got myself a supply of roaches. I used the below video as a tutorial, very similar.
> 
> http://www.metacafe.com/watch/772974/how_to_breed_crickets/
> 
> ...


Yeah. The Tupperware I use are sealed so they hold moisture condensation on the sides, and the tops have holes poked in them to allow for ventilation.  It's so easy.  The only thing is that you have to do it before you know you're gonna need the pinheads, like say if you are going to order a sling, throw a few prego females in a container.


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## nhdjoseywales (Feb 28, 2010)

i would say this. leaving the egg containers with teh adult crickets for days might not be a good idea. usually the females will start laying eggs immediately so you can get quite a lot pretty fast. when you leave the substrate in for days there is a greater chance of ending up with cricket feces in the mix and under humid conditions this tends to mold rapidly. this was my experience a few weeks ago after i saw essentially this same method on dirty jobs when mike rowe went to ghanns cricket farm. ghanns leaves them in for ten or twenty minutes then removes them to incubate elsewhere (obviously i didnt follow that part, which is what led to me discovering the fact that cricket poo molds quickly)


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## Link (Mar 1, 2010)

nhdjoseywales said:


> i would say this. leaving the egg containers with teh adult crickets for days might not be a good idea. usually the females will start laying eggs immediately so you can get quite a lot pretty fast. when you leave the substrate in for days there is a greater chance of ending up with cricket feces in the mix and under humid conditions this tends to mold rapidly. this was my experience a few weeks ago after i saw essentially this same method on dirty jobs when mike rowe went to ghanns cricket farm. ghanns leaves them in for ten or twenty minutes then removes them to incubate elsewhere (obviously i didnt follow that part, which is what led to me discovering the fact that cricket poo molds quickly)


2 female crickets aren't going to poo enough in two or three days time to foul all of their eggs.  The method works for what I need it for.  Sure, some eggs might go bad, but I end up netting about 100+ pinheads every time I do it. I was just trying to be helpful, as I have been noticing several pots about people not being able to find pinheads at pet stores.  I have had the same problem.


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## nhdjoseywales (Mar 1, 2010)

Link said:


> 2 female crickets aren't going to poo enough in two or three days time to foul all of their eggs.  The method works for what I need it for.  Sure, some eggs might go bad, but I end up netting about 100+ pinheads every time I do it. I was just trying to be helpful, as I have been noticing several pots about people not being able to find pinheads at pet stores.  I have had the same problem.


its not a matter of fouling the eggs directly as much as it is the substrate then starts to mold and once mold establishes you really cant stop it. Also the females will most likely lay all their eggs at once, not over the course of days so again, probably no need to leave it in there that long. 
im not trying to criticize you, im just offering advice based on my experience with a similar technique, just using more crickets


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## Teal (Mar 1, 2010)

*Hell, I used to get pinhead crickets in some tarantula enclosures! The females would lay eggs in the hour or two before they were eaten, then all the babies would end up in the water bowl in a week or two. *


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## Rowdy Hotel (Mar 1, 2010)

I place a deli cup with moist cocoa fiber and peat moss in with the crickets at work and then take it home after a day or two to incubate them. There's usually a few thousand in the bins for resale. I have millions and millions of free pinheads coming out of my ears.


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## Moltar (Mar 2, 2010)

I can see how getting femal crix to produce one round of pinheads would be a good bit easier than raising successive generations of them. That's not a bad idea if you have tiny babies to feed.

Now I think I'd rather stick my face in a belt sander than try to maintain a breeding cricket colony but that's a different thread...


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## Irene B. Smithi (Mar 2, 2010)

neat, I'll mark this thread and so that I can come back to it!!!  
I've never breed them before, but may need to, my collection of bugs seems to be growing!!! :?


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