Danny.
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Cricket Crack by SSimswisSS.
Homemade Dry Cricket Feed
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Danny.
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No recipe just a seller/website, doesn't belong here. Although I wish him well with it.
sschind
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Very Interesting method, seems like a bit of work initially but but once the rice is sprayed and dried its simple. Should store pretty easily as well. Thanks for the tip on dehydrating. I know I could borrow my buddy's dehydrator but this would save the trouble.
H_Ercule_S
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That's how I have always made all my wild game jerky, works nicely
I modified the recipe for what I had on hand and the results seem good, although my wife says the smell of the juiced mix and rice cooking with it, "smells like a old dirty diaper".
Not sure if this was the proper way as I was a bit lost on the instructions but it seems to have turned out - feel free to let me know if you are doing it differently.
I juiced the ingredients, and dried the mix in my food dehydrator. I took the dry mix and ground it in my blender to a power. With the powder I mixed that with water to make 1 quart (4 cups) of water/slurry/mix and mixed with two cups of white rice. I cooked the rice and it absorbed the water/slurry/mix, and once done added the rice to my food dehydrator a last time to dry.
I found the best way to break apart the dried rice is to place it into a ziplock bag and use a rolling pin, roll it over the larger pieces until they are broken apart. Here are two photos of the final results in my dehydrator and after breaking it apart, ready for the crickets to eat. Mine made a little over a pound of finished cricket feed.
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So far they have been eating it in moderation, much like their other foods (my powered food and cat food coated ones) - as they have been getting some fresh veggies lately. I also did some dehydrated banana chips, as the bananas were going bad and attracting FF and to test my food dehydrator, and they love the banana chips. The chips are nearly all but gone, a whole banana worth in about a week.
May have to give it more time, or remove some/all the other food to see if they like the new rice feed; although, that is kind of the point to see what food they prefer.
Krissim Klaw
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Wow that is some decated food preping there.
I would be more prone to offering the raw ingrediants versus mixing it into a chow. After watching the way my roaches are drawn to different foods at different times/stages in their life, I find myself leaning to give them control over what they want to eat versus all in one mixes.
I would be more prone to offering the raw ingrediants versus mixing it into a chow. After watching the way my roaches are drawn to different foods at different times/stages in their life, I find myself leaning to give them control over what they want to eat versus all in one mixes.
Thanks. Yeah, my setup area looks like I could make about any human meal (bowls, rolling pin, spatulas, measuring cups, grinder, blender, processor, dehydrator, microwave, etc. - but all for feeders)
I do give them raw ingredients too, but still search for a main/staple food source to make. As fruits and veggies attract wild fruit flies, go bad quickly even in the fridge, get hard to find and expensive in winter, and do not meet all their needs. I've been buying the food items when they are cheap/plentiful and dehydrating them with great success for mixes or giving it to the crickets direct too, such as bananas (the dehydrated foods also don't attract fruit flies).
So far it seems there isn't one main food source, but creating a few different ones is working great (no cannibalism, I don't find any ate on dead crickets, or such anymore either and their population numbers are really starting to grow). Cricket nymphs enjoy the powered mixes with more grain/cereal, and the adults want larger chunk mixes with more meat/protein.
Krissim Klaw
Well-known member
Yah I've seen you post some of the stuff you feed and even with the mixes I know you are offering a huge selection. You are a top chef in the realm of crickets.Thanks. Yeah, my setup area looks like I could make about any human meal (bowls, rolling pin, spatulas, measuring cups, grinder, blender, processor, dehydrator, microwave, etc. - but all for feeders)
I do give them raw ingredients too, but still search for a main/staple food source to make. As fruits and veggies attract wild fruit flies, go bad quickly even in the fridge, get hard to find and expensive in winter, and do not meet all their needs. I've been buying the food items when they are cheap/plentiful and dehydrating them with great success for mixes or giving it to the crickets direct too, such as bananas (the dehydrated foods also don't attract fruit flies).
So far it seems there isn't one main food source, but creating a few different ones is working great (no cannibalism, I don't find any ate on dead crickets, or such anymore either and their population numbers are really starting to grow). Cricket nymphs enjoy the powered mixes with more grain/cereal, and the adults want larger chunk mixes with more meat/protein.
Interesting you find the nymphs enjoy the more grainy foods while the adults go for the protein. With my roaches it is the exact opposit. The nymphs swarm my offered protein sources while the adults tend to favor fruits and more grain based stuff. There isn't time for fruit to go bad or call fruitflies in my breeder bin. I could stick an entire banana in the tank and it would be gone the next day. Little pigs.
Well thanks lol.
Perhaps roaches like the protein earlier on to grow faster. That does sound like a lot of piggies eating that fast, how big is your colony?
Krissim Klaw
Well-known member
Yep, I have always assumed the roach nymphs are drawn to it for growth purposes. I'm sort of surprised crickets don't want it for that same reason though. I'm not sure why, but I never really paid attention to what stages of cricket ate what when I had them, even though I loved to watch them munch on their food. Maybe it is because the species of roach I am currently keeping has green adults while the nymphs are brown so it just stands out to me more.
Protien is a more delicate balance when it comes to roaches. Studies have found that it is likely many species of them can't process the excess uric acid that is formed from a by product of eating protein. This mostly becomes a problem as adults since the nymphs will naturally utilize this during their growth. Thus roaches forced on too high of a protein diet can result in the adults dieing early deaths.
My colony is in a twenty gallon tank. I'm always amazed at how much they can pack away. Seems like I am constantly culling numbers to try and thin the heard, but the substrate remains a withering mass of roachy goodness.
I do have results now, and I stopped feeding fresh veggies to ensure they were hungry. I placed the rice food, my powdered mix, and the dry cat food covered in my powder mix in little measured mounds of the same size in a pattern much like a peace sign. That way I could observe which they are eating, and they shouldn't be affected by placement. I did two food areas, one on top of their egg crates and the other on the substrate.
The crickets ate some of all three foods, but there is definitely a winner. At last check they ate nearly all but two kernels of the cat food covered in my powder mix, and there were a few dozen total in both piles. Next my powdered mix was their 2nd favorite with about 40-50% of it ate. Lastly, the rice was kicked around a bit, but I quickly noticed they only ate maybe 10-20% of it. I thought of weighing individual food bowls for a before/after, but it seems to be overkill.
A strange development though is the cat food covered kernels seem to be chosen by the crickets as they can carry them off to eat under/in the egg crates. When I collected some crickets for my mantids I noticed about half of the kernels were still whole/identifiable under the egg crates - they however were missing the coating. So it seems the crickets love the powder mix but want it in a form they can carry off. I'll have to play around and see if I can get it to form in loose balls for them.
H_Ercule_S
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Sorry for not posting September was a fiasco... Rodeo month in a podunk cowboy town XD. I add all those ingredients after they've been dried and powdered to dry uncooked rice, much like rolling large pet food in powder. The only crickets that get eaten are the wild ones I put in, but they are a different species from store bought feeders, they may be picking fights and losing. The rice is normally untouched but licked clean. I keep my crickets in a 1 galon terrarium with peat moss substrate and change it twice monthly, adding it to my homemade charcoal and fish fertililizer in my compost bin.
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Not a problem, glad you posted. Are you involved with the rodeo, or just overrun by the event? There is a motorcycle event near here every year, and I sure hate the week it happens anymore.
Seems cooking isn't a step, and will be much appreciated by everyone in the house lol - it has a horrible smell, but not as bad as dehydrating the mealworms. I'll have to try again without cooking the rice. It sounds much like the cat food trick I do, the crickets eat the powder off it and usually pitch the kernels.
Sounds strange that the field crickets lose to the pet store crickets. It does seem though the majority I find dead in my tank of field crickets too. Perhaps the house cricket is just less communal.
H_Ercule_S
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Oh I tried cooking mealworms once for it... Once... Thankfully Walmart sells freeze dried mealworms in both the pet and garden center. Why you'd need a pound of them for cricket food is beyond me but the pound from garden center is cheaper than the few ounces from pets. I only get 2 dozen crickets at a time though. I bet it makes them a bit nicer to be able to have substrate for egg laying as well but I don't know
