Selection of Breeders
Keeping a cricket culture viable starts with selection of the new batch of breeders. You want to choose healthy and generally larger crickets. How many is determined by the number of crickets you want to produce. Over their 40 day laying period the female can average 1000 eggs. Not all the eggs survive to adulthood. From experience actually closer to 50% of the ones that hatch make it. Also keep in mind genetic diversity. Use at least 10 female and 5 males. If using more females, I find 7 males is plentiful. I found 40 female crickets produce more than I can raise with my setup. In theory, one male is all that is needed, but more chirping seems to encourage egg production, plus biodiversity. This is an observation. Having just one male is a liability because of the possibility if it dying and now there are none for a while until another matures from another group. I have no idea how often a female mates or how long she can produce fertile eggs from a single mating. They are secretive when passing the sperm packet to the female. I have only witnessed the act once in 16 years. I have seen many singing and dancing males and a lot of standoffish females. I feel for the rejected guy.
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Selection starts by choosing crickets that have not become adults. Mites can hide under the wings of adults. Choosing crickets that jump well is imperative. Catching jumpers is a catch-22. No pun intended. The crickets that jump the best are the hardest to catch. There is a disease that affects the back legs of crickets so if there is any difficulty in either jumping or simply walking, they are rejected. I work with a small batch (<20) so the good ones can be identified and caught.
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Female crickets have an ovipositor (stem) between the rear cerci, or in simple terms they have a "stick up their butt". This stem develops into the ovipositor on their final molt, along with wings. Males are definitely lacking this stem but have wings. Catch a few more crickets than the final number desired. There is the chance of escape or molting issues or other problems before reaching the mating and egg laying state. The numbers can be pared down after they molt and have wings.
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To help keeping the spread of mites in check, dust the crickets with sublimed sulfur, (aka flowers of sulfur). Put the potential breeders into a gallon plastic container. Place about 1 teaspoon of sulfur into a fine mesh sieve (breaks up lumps) and dust the crickets. Give the jar a swirl to totally coat the crickets. Allow them to sit for 15 minutes. Sulfur does not harm the crickets in this short time. It does not kill the mites either but it encourages them to leave the host. Have ready a Sterilite container with a paper towel sheet in the bottom. After 15 minutes, turn the jar on its side and allow the crickets to escape and fall onto the paper towel. An 8” free fall is good. Try not to dump out excess sulfur from the jar. Gently remove the paper towel, preventing any sulfur from falling off it and discard the towel. Make sure no crickets are hanging on the towel. In another clean container with a paper towel, repeat the process. Repeat the procedure a third time by dumping the crickets onto a paper towel in a 50 qt. container set up to be their home until they are fully mature. Carefully remove the towel. The physical shock during dumping knocks off the sulfur along with mites if present (in theory). An 8“ drop is sufficient and will not harm the crickets. This procedure is imperative if there has been a mite problem. Mites are omnipresent- they are everywhere. Better to be safe than to wish it was done. The process seems to work well for me.
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As a last step in selection, once the crickets mature remove any that failed to molt correctly and reduced the number of adults if necessary to achieve how many pinheads you want. Move the crickets into a prepared breeding cage with a new ELB. Be sure to date the ELB and indicate somewhere when the breeders were started either on cage or on a calendar, to be referred to later to replace these with the next batch of breeders.
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To keep the possibility of mites at a minimum, I change out all of the breeders at one time. A yet untried possibility, and better if rearing a small number, is the adding near adult crickets to the breeding cage weekly. If 4 females and 2 males were added weekly, you would achieve the same effect of starting cages with 14 females. The difference is the bell curve egg laying cycle per female would be spread out giving a more constant production. Still sulphur them before adding them, just in case. Some may die before reaching breeding age hence 4 vs 3 sub-amagos. These numbers can be adjusted based upon actual numbers of adults that reach adulthood. The ovipositor on older females tends to split. If these cannot rejoin, depositing the eggs under the surface is impossible. I do not know if this repair even happens. I will have to test this someday. If the splits curl, pull the adult as it is no longer going to lay eggs. Older crickets also have problems moving. In nature they would be eaten by a predator.
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