Where do people get their live feeder insects from?

[dragonlover1]

Personally I don't "sort them out" I just feed my turtles on alternating days... adult woodies with wings for my ELN's and purvisi on one day, half grown wingless woodies for my smaller sub adult Macleays on another day and teeny tiny baby woodies for my babies every other day... so each day I open my woody bin I'm only after a certain size and that makes getting the ones I want easy, just open my egg cartons and select the ones I want my grabbing them with my feeding tongs. Especially easy this time of year when the colony is down into the lower single digits, they are extrememy slow moving lol.

It's too time consuming to pick them out with tongs, I have over 20 adult dragons of various sizes plus babies at certain times so the 3 bucket method is the best (for me anyway)

 

[Flaviemys purvisi]

It's too time consuming to pick them out with tongs, I have over 20 adult dragons of various sizes plus babies at certain times so the 3 bucket method is the best (for me anyway)

Dunno how you do it but I can feed 2 dozen turtles on any given day in 10-15 mins with my method. For me having 3 buckets would just create more work and take more time.

 

[dragonlover1]

Dunno how you do it but I can feed 2 dozen turtles on any given day in 10-15 mins with my method. For me having 3 buckets would just create more work and take more time.

it's easy, the 3 buckets pour into each other, with different size holes getting smaller as they go down. So big bugs stay in the top bucket, medium stay in the middle and small bugs go down to the bottom. Then just feed them to the appropriate sized critters

 

[Herpetology]

It's too time consuming to pick them out with tongs, I have over 20 adult dragons of various sizes plus babies at certain times so the 3 bucket method is the best (for me anyway)

Do u mind me asking what drillbit sizes u used? Looking for adult + small/medium + teeny tiny

for me too we are feeding too many animals on different sized woodies, putting all the woodies together and feeding out from same container would take a day in itself

 

[dragonlover1]

Do u mind me asking what drillbit sizes u used? Looking for adult + small/medium + teeny tiny

for me too we are feeding too many animals on different sized woodies, putting all the woodies together and feeding out from same container would take a day in itself

I used 23/64" in the top bucket but I found some of the large woodies could wriggle through so I'd suggest 5/16" and the next bucket I used 3/16" which is perfect to let the little ones through.
And my buckets are 5 litre not the big 20 litre ones

 

[Herpetology]

success. Babies and lots of them (there’s about 15 more sheets of egg tray underneath packed with babies), I think increasing temp in room helped.

how long is their growth from nymph to adult? And how long is their “gestation “

 

[Flaviemys purvisi]

success. Babies and lots of them (there’s about 15 more sheets of egg tray underneath packed with babies), I think increasing temp in room helped.

how long is their growth from nymph to adult? And how long is their “gestation “
View attachment 333793

G'day mate, the incubation period of the brood sac is 36 days and an average of 33 eggs will be carried by a mature female who will have up to 6 breeding cycles in her lifetime. Woodies are falsely Ovoviviparous. The female extrudes the ootheca from its brood sac but does not deposit it. Young emerge from the ootheca while it is still carried by the mother, eat their embryonic membranes and the ootheca, and cling to the mother for approximately an hour before departing. Woodies, unlike crickets are not cannibalistic, adults will not molest newly emerged young or freshly moulted juveniles.
Males take approx 72 days and 7 moults to reach adulthood and live for 365 days whereas females take 85 days and 8 moults to reach adulthood and live for 344 days.

 

[Dustf0rlunch]

Crickets take so long to grow out to the size I need, I would need like 5 colonies going at once to sustain my lizards, that’s why I breed meal worms and woodies also so I can vary their diet and give the crickets time to grow.
A few pointers on breeding crickets would be handy if anyone has any?

I recently tried breeding my own crickets, which I found very easy, so was excited to be able to produce my own. I was really surprised though at how long they took to grow. The first couple of weeks they seemed to grow really fast, but then it's like they stalled. For a couple of months they just didn't grow at all. They stayed around the 'extra small' size you get from Pisces. I ended up just feeding them all to my geckoes and abandoning the breeding operation.

It's weird too, because when I buy the 'small' Pisces brand crickets, they grow into bloody adults in no time.

 

[dragonlover1]

Woodies, unlike crickets are not cannibalistic, adults will not molest newly emerged young or freshly moulted juveniles.

Hey Kev, a care sheet I read years ago said woodies were cannibalistic and to use drinking straws to shelter the babies from the adults so I have done this ever since

 

[Flaviemys purvisi]

Hey Kev, a care sheet I read years ago said woodies were cannibalistic and to use drinking straws to shelter the babies from the adults so I have done this ever since

Woodies aren't canniballistic at all.

 

[Herpetology]

Woodies aren't canniballistic at all.

Is it weird that all my die off are adults? I imagine this is from biosupplies sending woodies from their oldest colonies at their use by date

I found half the carrot I gave them had been eaten overnight, but lots of die off, mainly adults, a few larger medium sized…

my setup has rodent cubes + 1 or 2 slices of wet carrot/sweet potato… I was thinking of using insect booster powder instead of the cubes… the cubes are oven dried and quite hard, definitely not something you can crush with your foot, so don’t know how the woodies go with this…
Thoughts?

 

[Flaviemys purvisi]

Is it weird that all my die off are adults? I imagine this is from biosupplies sending woodies from their oldest colonies at their use by date

I found half the carrot I gave them had been eaten overnight, but lots of die off, mainly adults, a few larger medium sized…

my setup has rodent cubes + 1 or 2 slices of wet carrot/sweet potato… I was thinking of using insect booster powder instead of the cubes… the cubes are oven dried and quite hard, definitely not something you can crush with your foot, so don’t know how the woodies go with this…
Thoughts?

Use straight up cheap dry dog kibbles.

 

[Sugar]

I recently tried breeding my own crickets, which I found very easy, so was excited to be able to produce my own. I was really surprised though at how long they took to grow. The first couple of weeks they seemed to grow really fast, but then it's like they stalled. For a couple of months they just didn't grow at all. They stayed around the 'extra small' size you get from Pisces. I ended up just feeding them all to my geckoes and abandoning the breeding operation.

It's weird too, because when I buy the 'small' Pisces brand crickets, they grow into bloody adults in no time.

Yeah that’s the same observations I made,
It seems like they feed them growth hormones haha, ( I’m sure they don’t)
But it seems like it.

 

[dragonlover1]

Is it weird that all my die off are adults? I imagine this is from biosupplies sending woodies from their oldest colonies at their use by date

I found half the carrot I gave them had been eaten overnight, but lots of die off, mainly adults, a few larger medium sized…

my setup has rodent cubes + 1 or 2 slices of wet carrot/sweet potato… I was thinking of using insect booster powder instead of the cubes… the cubes are oven dried and quite hard, definitely not something you can crush with your foot, so don’t know how the woodies go with this…
Thoughts?

once the woodies grow wings they are near the end of life, also cut the amount of wet feed you give them. Too much wet food kills them quickly.
I stopped using dog biscuits on the advice of Brian who is a professional woodie breeder because dog biscuits have too much protein for beardies. I now use pollard as my feed powder.
If you are worried about getting too many old woodies, buy extra medium and grow them up to the size you need

 

[Flaviemys purvisi]

once the woodies grow wings they are near the end of life, also cut the amount of wet feed you give them. Too much wet food kills them quickly.
I stopped using dog biscuits on the advice of Brian who is a professional woodie breeder because dog biscuits have too much protein for beardies. I now use pollard as my feed powder.
If you are worried about getting too many old woodies, buy extra medium and grow them up to the size you need

Hehe "professional woodie breeder" that made me chuckle.. you know what credentials you need to breed roaches?? 3/5 of FA... I have known Brian for a long time back from the AFT days, he used to keep a few ELN turtles. Brian has a new strain of woodies that are particularly soft and die easily... he had to modify his husbandry drastically to curb his substantial losses he was having. I got my original 30 woodies from Brian, pre 2012 and they are of the old original strain, hence why my colony today craps all over his... he's told me several times that I'm "so lucky" to still have the original old strain as the "new woodies" are far inferior and less hardy/resilient by comparison. Mine are all outside in single figure weather now down to zero degrees daily and still breeding... you won't get that with the new post 2012 woodies.

 

[Herpetology]

So instead of getting dog kibble, since I already have a buttload of the rodent cubes, I found a way to get it crushed to a decently fine powder and sprayed it so it went soft and then let it dry for a little bit…

I have more babies than I had before, probably a thousand Atleast… they definitely prefer the small piece of old dried out carrot (vs fresh cut), they were munching on it, holes everywhere… progress!

Sorry if I missed it in previous post, but do they only breed after adult hood? Or can they have babies before their winged stage ?

 

[Japho]

Given Silkworm Chow and heating exist... why is it that silkworms aren't available year-round?

 

[Dustf0rlunch]

Yeah that’s the same observations I made,
It seems like they feed them growth hormones haha, ( I’m sure they don’t)
But it seems like it.

Glad I'm not the only one! I found it strange, as from what I have read, they're only supposed to have something like a 6 week life cycle. Mine were older than that and still extra small!