Capturing housed crix

[Digger]

If you feed crix to your mantids, what methods do you use to capture a cricket and deposit it into the mantid's housing? 

For years I've tried spoons, toilet paper rolls, tweezers, small bottles.  It's always a nightmare trying to capture them.  How do

you securely capture your crix??  Many thanks !! 

 

[tracy]

We don't feed ours crickets, but I used to work at a store where we sold them (lots of them, daily). We used a plastic scoop (similar to ones you'd find for pet food) to fetch them out of the big enclosure and put them in a container. I remember them being pretty easy to handle that way, scoop in one hand and container in the other. (We had to count them nearly perfectly as our store owner was kind of a jerk about people getting extras. Of freakin' cheap crickets. /eyeroll)

It was easier in the larger of the two enclosures we had since we could essentially hold both hands over it with room to work with, but the smaller enclosure wasn't that much more of a pain. Not sure how large of a container you're keeping yours in or if that would make a difference for you.

 

[hysteresis]

I had a paper tube, stapled shut on one end. With aggressive sp. I'd just grab it with tongs and present it. No problem. 

 

[hibiscusmile]

I use the the 11" forceps they work great, also used the cricket catcher, and for lots of them I use a tolit paper roll and funnel them into a water bottle.