I began keeping herps around 35 years ago when we had turtles, a ribbon snake, some locally collected lizards, and a few western newts (not sure which species as we didn't keep any photos). Most of the prey items were captured in the woods behind the house, but we could get small fish, crickets, and mealworms in the bait and pet shops. Of those, I noticed the nearest zoo preferred to use crickets to feed their insect eating herps. Therefore, I began to use more crickets and less mealworms.
At some point I got out of reptile keeping and re-emerged later as various roaches were becoming more popular. The only species I really felt comfortable using in my home, the dubia roach, I found actually had a lot of drawbacks. It takes a long time to start a colony whereas I can hatch out hundreds or thousands of crickets in less than a month. The dubia roaches often hide or hold still when encountered, whereas crickets hop around most of the time and catch the attention of my animals better. Finally, the crickets were a lot less expensive when I simply wanted to purchase them. To be fair, the crickets do have their downsides -- they don't live as long, they don't get as large which is a disadvantage if you have large herps, the females can lay eggs in moist enclosures, and if you have adult crickets the chirping is annoying. Many people claim cricket cages stink, but if your cricket cages stink you are keeping them far too moist, overpopulated, or have some other cleanliness issue. The crickets moisture source always has to be fresh and clean and overall too much moisture will kill anything more than 10 days or so old.
In my view, crickets still have a lot going for them. They are cheap, easy to obtain, a lot of data on how to properly gut load them has been published in peer reviewed literature (compared to most other insects), and widely accepted as I've used them for most lizards, frogs, and salamanders I've kept over the years.
At some point I got out of reptile keeping and re-emerged later as various roaches were becoming more popular. The only species I really felt comfortable using in my home, the dubia roach, I found actually had a lot of drawbacks. It takes a long time to start a colony whereas I can hatch out hundreds or thousands of crickets in less than a month. The dubia roaches often hide or hold still when encountered, whereas crickets hop around most of the time and catch the attention of my animals better. Finally, the crickets were a lot less expensive when I simply wanted to purchase them. To be fair, the crickets do have their downsides -- they don't live as long, they don't get as large which is a disadvantage if you have large herps, the females can lay eggs in moist enclosures, and if you have adult crickets the chirping is annoying. Many people claim cricket cages stink, but if your cricket cages stink you are keeping them far too moist, overpopulated, or have some other cleanliness issue. The crickets moisture source always has to be fresh and clean and overall too much moisture will kill anything more than 10 days or so old.
In my view, crickets still have a lot going for them. They are cheap, easy to obtain, a lot of data on how to properly gut load them has been published in peer reviewed literature (compared to most other insects), and widely accepted as I've used them for most lizards, frogs, and salamanders I've kept over the years.
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