Dubia Math

[gregorydragon]

I am growing impatient as I anticipate the day to rid my house of crickets. I am trying to do some calculations to see how many adult females I need before feeding out of my colony of Dubia. If my beardie eats 30 small nymphs a day, that's 900 a month. I can safely estimate that each female will produce 20 babies a month (I will only use 15 for my calculation, just to be safe). That means that I can "safely" feed out of my colony when I reach 60 adult females, right? :book: :study: (60 x 15 = 900) :study: :book:

 

[Zemanski]

how do you count them?

 

[BestRoach]

Yes and no. You will need a buffer of roaches at the size you feed. So, if your feeding 1/2" roaches, then your going to want extra in that size, so when you start feeding, you don't run out. Roaches start out small, and will take about 1 month to reach 1/2" in size.

Otherwise, your caclulations are good. I would another 10 breeding females, just to be safe however.

 

[gregorydragon]

how do you count them?

I haven't done this yet, but I plan to count them by hand. Shake out the egg crates and do a head count.

 

[gregorydragon]

Yes and no. You will need a buffer of roaches at the size you feed. So, if your feeding 1/2" roaches, then your going to want extra in that size, so when you start feeding, you don't run out. Roaches start out small, and will take about 1 month to reach 1/2" in size.

Otherwise, your caclulations are good. I would another 10 breeding females, just to be safe however.

Awesome! Thanks! I plan to do a head count in about another week. That will be a month since I set up my colony. I got roaches from a few different sources and many of them were very large nymphs and several adult males and females so I may be close! If I have to wait another month, then I might go ahead and order some just to feed.