claudiusx":1kv6upkg said:
You most certainly can buy insects from local shops. That's a silly suggestion.
Every pet store that doesnt breed their own insects buys them from those same places youd be buying from online.
You can always ask them, but like mentioned they buy from supplier online anyways and since hornworms usually come in chow cups, that's what they would be eating.
The only benefit of ordering online vs a pet shop is its usually much cheaper online since you're cutting out the middle man. And in pet shops, they usually only have the large hornworms so picking a size is harder.
-Brandon
A very common issue with live insects sold as feeders by petshops (here and I suspect in the USA too) is very poor quality and very poor care the insects get .
They are essentially stacked on shelves or in open fridges (to keep them dormnant) and only looked at when the tub is scanned for the sale, more often than not , not fed or given any source of
hydration ( ie fresh slices of carrot ) so when the "punters" come in looking for their supply of bugs , the bugs are often putrid , fly/wasp blown and half or more dead.
You can get around this somewhat if you develop a friendly relationship with the person who orders the shop's weekly consignments of bugs , and find out what day the delivery happens , and be there shortly afterwards to buy the freshly arrived bugs. Do this before they are buried under the older stock or learn their system for identifying which tubs are fresh and which are are (usually a mark will be made on the tub that encodes this for the petshop staff, a local shop to me uses a pink highlighter marking one week, it's blue the next, then green , then yellow the next, they never mark with arrival date - don't want the customers to see the dates).
Of cause, buying your insects by mailorder direct from the breeders is going save you a lot of $ in the long run , as well being very convenient , in that you don't need to go to a shop to get them.
An example , a tub of 45 medium crickets will perhaps be $7 in the pet shop. About 16c each assuming all healthy. Very common to find 1/3 or more of the insects dead or sick and dying .
But from the supplier , 1000 medium crickets might cost $40 , so 4c each.