I feed my adult, wild-caught mantids, crickets. I feed crickets dog food because I have it, and salad greens because we always have some of those, usually spinach, kale, collard greens and such like...iceberg lettuce if there's nothing else, as their sole source of water. They always have some sort of greens available.
In the last few months since I've been reading this forum, I started using store brand oatmeal as bedding under the crickets, as per Rick's suggestion (great idea...thanks!). Not only is their odor totally irradiated but I notice them carrying it around and, I am guessing, eating it, too. They don't eat much of the dog food. Maybe I need to crush it more or something.
Today, they needed greens and I hadn't any in the fridge. Once in a while, we put young dandelion leaves in our salads so I went into an area under the hedges and picked a couple of clumps of dandelion leaves. They have never devoured any green so ravenously as they did those. I won't feed any green, or any food for that matter exclusively, but this will become a part of my cricket and (hopefully), b. lateralis diet when in season.
