Anyone breeding grasshoppers?

[suzuki4life]

I paid the kids a dime each(per grasshopper) to round up grasshoppers for me as breeding stock. I now have 50+. I have them in a front load 4x2x2 melamine cage. 2 ceramic heaters going to keep the cage at 90+.

I have been feeding cabbage and some celery tops. They eat tons!!!!!

No babies yet but my egg box is riddled with holes.

From what I am seeing, the heat is a must. They eat non stop if they can. I have caught a few planting their eggs in the egg box. Fingers crossed.

 

[Carnivorouszoo]

I'd be worried about parasites and illnesses or other icky stuff from wild caught insects. . . but it sounds interesting.. ..

 

[randommonks]

I wouldn't feed the wild caught ones, but the research lab I worked at in college caught wild grasshoppers and bred them for research purposes. What they did is put them in a foot by foot by foot cube made of mesh wire and a cloth front that they could twist close with a clothes hanger. They put a bunch of grasshoppers in there, used iceburg lettuce and a petridish full of oatmeal and bran, and put in styrofoam cups of sand in there for the grasshoppers to lay in. They kept the incubation room where adults and nymps are kept around 85F. We changed out cups every couple of days, sifted eggs from the sand, put about 5-7 egg pods in vermiculite, and put them in the fridge until we needed them to hatch (not sure what the temp was here and not sure if this is a needed step). We would take out the cups of eggs and vermiculite from the fridge and put them in the incubation room, cover them with a petri dish, and within a couple of weeks, we'd have TINY TINY nymps popping up, bouncing off the petri dish top.

That might have been more info than you wanted or needed, but they had a very successful setup to breed wild caught grasshoppers.

 

[suzuki4life]

I'd be worried about parasites and illnesses or other icky stuff from wild caught insects. . . but it sounds interesting.. ..

You don't use them as feeders, you use them as breeders. Plus farm raised insects are far from disease free. Breed your own and try your best to provide the best you can.

 

[suzuki4life]

I wouldn't feed the wild caught ones, but the research lab I worked at in college caught wild grasshoppers and bred them for research purposes. What they did is put them in a foot by foot by foot cube made of mesh wire and a cloth front that they could twist close with a clothes hanger. They put a bunch of grasshoppers in there, used iceburg lettuce and a petridish full of oatmeal and bran, and put in styrofoam cups of sand in there for the grasshoppers to lay in. They kept the incubation room where adults and nymps are kept around 85F. We changed out cups every couple of days, sifted eggs from the sand, put about 5-7 egg pods in vermiculite, and put them in the fridge until we needed them to hatch (not sure what the temp was here and not sure if this is a needed step). We would take out the cups of eggs and vermiculite from the fridge and put them in the incubation room, cover them with a petri dish, and within a couple of weeks, we'd have TINY TINY nymps popping up, bouncing off the petri dish top.

That might have been more info than you wanted or needed, but they had a very successful setup to breed wild caught grasshoppers.

sounds similar to what i found from youtube.

i plan to just switch out the egg boxes weekly.

 

[randommonks]

Just a gross warning: some of the grasshoppers we got from Arizona (not sure if they are the same type in Texas) had a maggot inside of them, that ate the grasshopper from the inside out, and would emerge when it was ready to pupate. We kept some of the maggots, and they turned into humongous flies. Just in case you end up seeing this in your own colony