Grasshoppers

[pinefamily]

A lot of reptiles eat them in the wild, so why does no-one breed grasshoppers for live food?

 

[Stompsy]

I stress when I open the crickey and woody tubs! Grasshoppers would give me a heart attack with all their jumping about! It is however a great question. And one that I have no answers for.

 

[Nero Egernia]

Never occurred to me to breed them. I simply catch the wild ones when they're out and about.

 

[kankryb]

I buy mine from a mate who breeds them, You need more than 3 tanks to breed them because you have to take the eggs out from the big ones to start in a new tank or they will eat the eggs so you end up with a tank with big ones, a tank with middel sized ones and a tank with Hatchies

 

[pinefamily]

Same principle as cricket breeding.. then.

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[longirostris]

Over the years there have been a few people who have bred grasshoppers/locusts for the live reptile food market. The problem with grasshoppers as I am told is that they can literally die out all at the same time which obviously creates supply problems for the customer and rebuilding the breeding stock for the breeder. They are very difficult to provide the right environment for over a long term period so that they skip the natural mass die out trigger that seems to be inherent in these insects. As in the wild there seems to be a trigger possibly even a genetic switch that causes a mass die off. Sometimes just a slight change in tempreture or food availability or type of food is all that is needed to wipe out a breeding colony much the same as what happens in the wild. Humidity and moisture management appears to be critical.

As Kankryb has said there are still some people that breed them on a small scale but apparently they are way too time consuming from a labour point of view to breed them commercially and be able to sell them for what people would be prepared to pay for them.

The main species that used to be sold several years ago was the African Migratory Locust. Evidently according to breeders at the time, this species was one of the easiest to keep and breed. They were very hard to get even when they were available and were very expensive as well. I used to buy mine in lots of 100 at a time and they were sometimes as much as a dollar each. They were fantastic for my larger dragons as treats like giant mealworms. The difference being that the locusts were only offered as treats because of the price not the high keratin content in their exoskeleton as is the case with zoophobia mealworms. I should also add that these locusts were about 3 times the size of an adult cricket, so 5 or 6 of these fully grown was a meal for an adult female frilled dragon and maybe 2 or 3 more for a male. So even though they were expensive they were still good value in providing real diet variation for prized animals ensuring good health and vitality and interest in food items being offered.

It would be fantastic to have somebody breeding these again commercially because they would give those of us that keep insect eating lizards another type of insect to offer our animals as a variation to their core diets. If anybody is prepared to send me a message with details of where I could buy them from I would be very happy.

 

[pinefamily]

Thanks for the info. I'd definitely be interested in buying some too.

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[Murph_BTK]

Yeap indeed i would also place a order or Ten!! [emoji6]

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