Number of animals vs whether or not you breed feeders

[Adirondackgeckos]

At .11c a cricket, $4.00 per container of 25 supers and many mouths to feed I have been breeding my own feeders for a few years now. Plus shipping here in the winter is not even an option. I like the idea of breeding and keeping feeders anyway, I know they are fed the right food and they are clean.

 

[kevinb]

I only have three Leos right now...but plan for many more so to get a head start I'm starting a mealworm colony now...and getting some dubia and hissers to start some colonies there too.

Kevin Bullis

 

[ieatfish]

Great info! For those who only have a single gecko, how do you keep your feeder population down? Right now we have a few month old leo who eats 10-12 crickets a night. From what I've learned, however, in a year or so he will only be eating a few times a week and can eat the bigger bugs. We've been considering breeding roaches but we don't need a billion of them like I've seen in some colonies.

I guess what I'm asking is, for those of you with a single gecko yet breeding your feeders, do you find you have WAY too many feeders than you can feed?

 

[houseb]

I only had one gecko when I started breeding dubia roaches and even though she still eats daily, I still had more feeders than I needed. To slow down production, I simply unplugged the heat mat I had on the roach bin. I still have to cull the adult males since I don't have anything that can eat them yet. Even though I have an excess of feeders, I'm still really glad I decided to breed my own; especially since I can control the quality of my feeders. If you do end up with extras, you can always donate them to a reptile rescue or simply ask around to see if anyone wants some dubias for their pets.

 

[rickmoss95]

i got 2500 mealies a few weeks ago to feed. they were pretty big and about 300 of them ended up pupating before they got fed off(i only have 12 leopards at this time) so i did some research on breeding them. well now i have about 250ish perfect beetles that are breeding like crazy. i am going to give this a try and see if the effort is worth not buying them. i also plan on trying my hand at breeding blaptica dubia, simply because they can be somewhat costly and i plan on having around 50 or sixty adult leopards within a year. i kinda want to have dubia as my main food source for my leopards, and dont want to HAVE to buy them. i will let you all know how this works out for me after i have some experience with this.

 

[Carmella]

I breed my own hybrid roach's for all my animals. Everything I have will eat them. I do buy crickets and rats but I only pay like 2 cents a piece for the cricket and only pay cost for my rats from a friend that owns a pet shop in town, so im fine with that. All my Leos are on roach's, even the babies are on baby roach's. I like the roach's especially for my bigger animals. I breed rats just for their rat pups so I have them available all the time for my hatchling snakes.

 

[Klogue1]

I have a handful (brain-dead moment) of geckos and plan on starting my own mealworm and dubia colonies soon. I guess it would be kind of a waste if the colonies REALLY get going, but I'm going to try to stabilize them so that I only get as much as I need...
I mostly want to breed because it sounds like a bunch of fun (I have a lot of time on my hands lol), and then there's the money I won't have to pay once they're established, and I won't have to worry about bad insect making my reptiles sick...

 

[Kotori]

Great info! For those who only have a single gecko, how do you keep your feeder population down? Right now we have a few month old leo who eats 10-12 crickets a night. From what I've learned, however, in a year or so he will only be eating a few times a week and can eat the bigger bugs. We've been considering breeding roaches but we don't need a billion of them like I've seen in some colonies.

I guess what I'm asking is, for those of you with a single gecko yet breeding your feeders, do you find you have WAY too many feeders than you can feed?

Well, my colony of mealworms is still not producing the thousands it should, but when it does kick it's butt into gear, I have a reptile rescue that would appreciate free worms, and if I have a huge glut, then I can sell online.

I'm probably going to start a roach colony. I did the math and you only need 1.3 or 1.4 to feed a leopard gecko. (Of course I'm going to get about 50, because the rescue has 3 leopard geckos 3 bearded dragons and a crested gecko.)

You can also feed wild birds mealworms, or use them as bait.

 

[iLEO]

I think if u have one leo it would be a good idea to do a side project and get 100 mealworms n maybe breed a few of them just to get the feel for it in case u get more leos in the future. That way u have some sort of knowledge and experience so u dnt end up like me stressin over feeders and more leos lol. Plus it saves a lot on money depending on where u buy ur mealworms from. I have 6 leos and breed my mealies :]

 

[Kotori]

I have one leopard gecko and I breed mealworms, have one suprworm pupae, two about to pupate and 200 dubia on the way in the next week.

 

[Desdemona]

I have 5 Leos and a Bearded dragon and I breed my own roaches but I buy mealworms, supers, and whatever else. I try to give them a large variety, but if money is tight for some reason it's nice to have the roaches as backup. Generally though they are very spoiled.. ie well feed with lots of different bugs.

I was breeding the roaches when I only had 3 of them, you'll have plenty. If they get to much just try to find an adult Bearded Dragon to feed them too

 

[SFgeckos]

I have over 100 leopard geckos, plus many other insect eating species (geckos, lizards, amphibians, inverts, birds etc) and I breed my own feeders. I have raised many different species of feeder insects, but the easiest and most consistent in my opinion, is DUBIA ROACHES. (There may be other feeders that may fit into your space/budget/schedule and individual collection needs- I always recommend to try raising different species yourself!)

Perhaps I should make an entire thread explaining my "efficient dubia system" that I've created through many hours of trial/error- but here's a quick rundown. I have kept/breed dubia roaches since 2002, but only recently started using this system the last few years. I wish I had been doing this before because it saves me hours of having to pick through bins for the right sized nymph! I hope that others can also benefit from my experiences. Below is a brief outline:

Above each of my leopard gecko racks (each rack holds between 16-40 geckos depending on if it is an adult/juvi or hatchling rack) sits an old 10slot-shoebox Natures Spirit rack. Eight of the ten shoebox containers EACH contain 15-20 male dubia and 50-75 female dubia (minimum of 15.50 per tub x 8= 120m 400f total, or max of 20.75 x 8 tubs= 160m 600f total). Each adult tub is numbered #1-8, which is important for record keeping of production. Two of the tubs are strictly for raising the nymphs. My gecko room is warm (80-85F) so no additional heat is needed and the roaches breed year round. Once the adult dubia colony has been established for at least 5-6 weeks, there will be newborn nymphs on a regular basis. Obviously, it would be too time consuming to collect every nymph born each day. So every 4-5 weeks, depending on my feeding needs, I go through 2-4 bins and separate all the nymphs from the adults. On average, I collect roughly 500-600 nymphs PER TUB (Each adult female dubia can produce 12-20+ nymphs, average being around 15. So under optimal conditions, if one were to collect from all eight of the adult bins, 400 females x 15 nymphs= 6,000 nymphs or 600 females x 15 nymphs= 9,000 nymphs every 4-5 weeks. I have a notecard on the shoebox rack and it has the dates of "nymph collection" and approximate number of babies per collection. Here are some recent entries from a baby leo rack that holds 27 baby leos:

9/24 #1,2= 1,000 nymphs
10/8 #3= 600 nymphs
10/25 #4= 500 nymphs

The numbers correspond to the adult bin number and I make sure to not over collect from each bin, but rotate them so they each roughly have 4-5 weeks between collections. When the production starts to drop, the older colonies can be replaced with new fresh adults. The newborn nymphs are housed all together and raised for 2-8 weeks (depending on what size you need) before being fed out. Since I have so many colonies and nymph grow out tubs, I can swap and switch with other racks depending on if I need more young nymphs to feed baby leos or 3/4 inch nymphs for my adult leos.

The cost for maintaining each colony is roughly a 50lb bag of dog food every 5-6 months, various leftover fruits/veggies (I prefer oranges/apples) or water crystals, and of course time/labor (roughly 10-15 minutes per day to check food/water but also feed roaches to your geckos, plus 30 minutes every 4-5 weeks for collecting newborn nymphs)

Remember to have PATIENCE with dubia roaches! It takes a few months to get established, but once established you will be easily overrun with roaches! I hope this helps someone!

Jon