Freeze Dried Crickets/Worms

Hey There,
Our beardie Pascal sometimes enjoys freeze dired crickets more then he does live ones. He tends to get stressed out when he goes in his feeding tank with the live ones and sometimes will not eat them. But he will eat the freeze dried ones by the container (like they are candy!). So my question is, does anyone buy freeze dried crickets or worms in bulk? The only food the pet stores sell are those small containers for about $10 each. Its a waste of money. Any suggestions?

Probably just finds the freeze dried crickets easy to catch over live crickets that move. Spoiled, is the word that comes to mind, just like my Bearded Dragon.

Freeze dried crickets shouldn't be used as a staple. Freeze dried crickets remove a lot of nutrients in crickets that are needed. If you want to try, this have been a topic most recently on the forums (Linkage), try buying live crickets and freeze them in the freezer. Be sure to gutload them for 24-48 hours and pop them in container and freeze them. Warm them up to room temperature prior to feeding, else he may eat them whole. Be sure to dust them properly like you would with live crickets. You may have to play with them a bit to get your Beardie interested, but if he is already loving lifeless crickets that where freeze dried, then it shouldn't be an issue.

I get freeze dried for my beardie, but as mentioned before I do not use it as a staple. I do dust them as well before I feed them to my beardie flames. Another thing you can try is beardie bites from nature zone, it is little pieces of cubed meat. Very high in nutrition and can be used as a protein staple. My beardie loves these things and will eat half of what I give her, along with veggies. She is over 2 years old so I do feed her superworms, and frozen thawed crickets as well. It should be carried in your local pet store, it could be worth the try since your guy does not eat live crickets.

you can also stick the crickets in the freezer for about 5 minutes to stun them so they don't move around and then feed them. That way you are still feeding 'fresh' crickets, but your bearded dragon might like them better since he seems to prefer the freeze dried. Freeze dried foods are very poor from a nutritional standpoint, from my understanding anyway.

Where do you purchase a bulk amount of live crickets to start to breed crickets/have enough to make my own frozen crickets?

Any website vendor, like Ghann's, Armstrong, Mulberry, etc. Just buy them size appropriate for your Bearded Dragon. Gutload them for 24-48 hours, then put them in a freezer bag/container that helps prevent freezer burn. I would say a 2 week supply would be good. Right now I have my 2 week supply in a suction freezer bag, going to see how well they last, and if they start the break down and so forth.


Breeding crickets is an entirely different subject. After I did my research on the subject, I decided it wasn't worth it. Not only is it hard, I found it to seem labor intensive. Not to mention smelly to all get out.

I live in the UK but found my local supplier vacuum packs any excess crickets he has and there are between 500-1000 in any one pack and are just few pounds. They're all gutloaded but i'll sprinkle some vit/mineral powder over them every few days. Unless you're going through them within 7 days they say its best to freeze them and thaw some as and when. I use them on days when i am out all day - i thaw some crickets and put them in his bowl along with some phoenix worms/calci-worms/reptiworms and some commercial pellets (He loves the pellets so they attract him over initially). He has his greens in a separate bowl in the cooler end. I keep the protein bowl in the hot end since he hangs around there and he'll grab any escapees. I also found vacuum packed locusts where you get 50 for half the price of live ones which i use as well for variety as well as the occasional superworms.
The rest of the time when im home during the day he gets dubia and every month a cricket gorge-fest where he gets only veggies the day before and a whole tub of adult crickets the next.

Freeze dried have very little nutritional value for dragons. I think you could try freezing then thawing crix. What u do is get some live crix. Enough for the feeding. And put them in the freezer for a few mins abt ten-15 mins. Then put calcium and put email into a bowl.