cutting up crickets
- Thread starter Jono_mad
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- Aug 20, 2002
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I've had luck with just pulling the hind legs off of the crickets and feeding them to the slings (Thanks to Code_monkey for the tip). It is much easier than cutting them up. If I do cut some thing up to feed to my slings I use mealworms.
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Well, what I do is first cut the cricket in half length wise going right through the middle of the body (think back to your lessons on bilateral symmetry 
). If the slings are larger, they may just get half a body at this point. For smaller slings I'll dice each half into 3 more or less equally sized pieces. I do all this with a sharp pair of dissection scissors.
Plus, if the cricket was large enough, you can even pull off the drumstick legs as was mentioned and feed up to 8 slings with one cricket.
It's not too important that the piece is appropriately sized - a cricket chunk isn't going to attack or otherwise harm anything. Just make sure to remove any uneaten leftovers about 24 hours later as it will mold quickly after that.
). If the slings are larger, they may just get half a body at this point. For smaller slings I'll dice each half into 3 more or less equally sized pieces. I do all this with a sharp pair of dissection scissors.Plus, if the cricket was large enough, you can even pull off the drumstick legs as was mentioned and feed up to 8 slings with one cricket.
It's not too important that the piece is appropriately sized - a cricket chunk isn't going to attack or otherwise harm anything. Just make sure to remove any uneaten leftovers about 24 hours later as it will mold quickly after that.
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Cricket legs work great for small Ts, especially if you have larger ones to feed.
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IME, cutting up crix is more trouble than its worth. cleanup is hard to do, and the entire area of substrate where the piece of bug was tends to mold, so with each feeding you end up removing more and more substrate.
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Hmm... 28lbs of vermiculite is $13, enough substrate to house about 3500 slings. A complete substrate change costs $0.003. I pay about $0.085 for a cricket regardless of size, oh yeah, totally unworth it to stretch large crickets out
I spend a lot of money on crickets (come on critical mass for the roach colony!). I don't spend a thing in substrate in comparison. And when talking sling leftovers, it takes the same labor to clean up whether it was initially a cricket piece or cricket - whether there's a milligram or two of substrate extra with the cricket piece is less than irrelevant in my book.
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i would agree with you there, if when removing that little clump of substrate i was thouroughly convinced i was getting all the nasty stuff. ever since that little mystery mold debacle where i lost those slings i have been a bit overprotective when it comes to mold. anyway my petshop sells pinheads, so its just as easy for me to pick up a few pinheads with my adult crix and not worry about the whole thing. and besides it takes up too much time for me to sit in my t room removing and replacing substrate in 20 sling viles every other night, i have herps and rodents to feed too.