Cricket

Crickets really are the live food par excellence and their only drawback is that they will eat anything. They are a sort of insect goat, only more so, for crickets will eat each other and any animal they might come across. For this reason it is imperative that you do not put more crickets into an animal's cage than it requires for its immediate needs. Similarly, you ought not to introduce them into a cage where the animal is likely to be immobile for a longtime having said that, it is unusual to have any problems with the diner being eaten by the dinner, but it is as well that you should know.

Crickets come in all sorts of sizes from tiny, newly hatched babies to adults, which make them a very useful form of food. They get everywhere throughout the house, but despite that you will need crickets if you keep any sort of carnivorous animal, and fortunately they are very simple to breed.

Start your culture with an old aquarium and an airing cupboard, or some other suitable heat source, for the temperature must be about 21-26°C (70-80°F). The only difficulty is providing an escape proof lid and the best thing of all is a pair of women's discarded tights provided that any holes are at the feet end. Cut off one leg at the top of the thigh and the other at about the knee and throw away the two pieces with the feet attached. You are now left with the top part, one long leg and one short leg. Tie a knot in the short leg. The waistband of the tights is now slipped over the top edge of the tank to make an inelegant but effective nylon mesh lid. The other leg is used as a sleeve through which to insert your hand into the tank, and when it is not being used it should be twisted shut or loosely tied. Crickets eat almost anything, so keep an eye on the tights and renew them if you see a whole appearing.

However, before you put the tights over the tank you will need to set up the interior and for this you should get hold of a quantity of corrugated card, of which the best is the kind that has a flat sheet to which is glued the wavy bit without another flat sheet on the top. Cut it into strips about 15 cm (6 in) wide and roll them uprightly until you have a cylinder about 4 cm (11/2 in) in diameter and glue a strip of brown sticky tape around the outside to keep it in shape. The number of these you need will depend on the size of your container, but when these cylinders stood vertically should occupy about half the total floor space. It is an idea to put an elastic band around bundles of three of these cardboard rolls, so they do not fall over constantly. Put several layers of newspaper cut to size on the floor of the tank and stand all your cylinders on end. It makes no difference whether they are all together or separate. Put some food in the form of bread or cereals, together with a little apple to provide moisture, into the tank and two or three glass jars full of sterilized damp sand in which the females will lay their eggs. Introduce 20 or 30 crickets and leave them in peace somewhere warm and dark.

Crickets can be obtained by sending off to a specialist supplier or sometimes they can be found in pet shops, where 30 or 40 are sold pre-packed in a plastic tub. This is an extremely expensive way of buying them but it will provide you with enough stock to set up your culture. The reason for all the rolls of cardboard will become apparent as soon as you put the insects into the tank as they will vanish in a flash into the corrugations, and apart from when they are feeding they will live in the rolls for most of the time. This makes it fairly simple to harvest them. Take a small container, such as a jam jar into the tank, and then take each rolling turn, put one end into the jar and tap it sharply several times to dislodge the insects. Since you should only collect enough for a single feed at a time, it does not take long to collect this quantity. However, when the time arrives to have a good clean out of the tank, you have to be very careful or you end up with crickets everywhere. The best thing to do is to put the whole tank into the bath, after you have put in a plug which is not fixed to a chain. Put a clean tank into the bath as well and as soon as you remove the cardboard tubes full of crickets from the old tank you can put them straight into the other, which leaves only comparatively small numbers to transfer individually before they escape.

When you feed crickets to your pets you will discover that provided you feed them at the same time each day, the animals will be waiting to snap them up the moment you tip them into the cage.