Dubia Roaches

[Taffer]

The 12 lbs of food seems like a decent deal. The orange heads just destroy all the food I throw in with them. I think it's impossible to overfeed them.

Pudgy little buggers....no pun intended LOL

It is true that too much protien is bad for roaches...but I'm pretty sure it doesn't apply to plant protiens. Animal protiens break down into uric acid, it's the purines that are the source. Most plants don't contain purines, some nuts and beans do have a small amount though.

Check out this link...
http://www.acumedico.com/purine.htm
I'm not trying to be a know it all...I know little. I'm parroting what I saw in hopes that someone with more education/knowledge in this can make some better sense of it for us.

I pulled all of this out and sorted by the total purines in mg uric acid/100g (average) in an excel spreadsheet (I'm an Excel junkie), and these foods were really low, although you probably wouldn't feed all of these to roaches:
LOWEST IN PURINES (100 mg. uric acid/100 g and less) - Chedder/Chesire cheese, Edam cheese, Brie cheese, sweet cherry, cucumber, yogurt (min. 3.5% fat content), cottage cheese, tomato, pear, chicory, rhubarb, beer (pilsner lager beer, regular beer, German {wouldn't that be hilarious!}), onion, radishes, lettuce, bread - wheat (flour) or (white bread), apple, fennel leaves, radish, potato, gooseberry, sauerkraut (dripped off), Morello cherry, chanterelles mushrooms, red currant, carrot, endive, chanterelle mushrooms, raspberry, avocado, pineapple, kiwi fruit, orange, beet root, bread rolls, peach, strawberry, aubergine, Chinese leaves...

After more research, I learned enough that I knew I would not learn enough to make a decent educated statement in a day. It looks like it would be something for someone excels in chemistry to figure out, or someone how has had this explained to them by a doctor because they have/had gout.

I'm basing this on human diets, and I realize we are not roaches....but I just don't see how a plant that does not contain purines could ever metabolize into uric acid. I have tried to find a study on it, but I haven't been able to find one.

Per the link above, it just seems many plants are really low in purines (under 100 mg uric acid/100 g), although most listed are under 75 mg uric acid/100 g. Almost every plant on the website was in the "low purine" range. Some are not, such as sunflower seeds, Linseed (?), dry lentil seed and black gram (a bean). Compared to meats such as venison back - 105, venison leg - 138, which are on the low end, up to man fish and fowl being 200-400 range, and some items on the list going up to 1,800 and 2300.

Alfalfa is a good source of protein, and it actually helps with preventing gout. Gout is the formation of uric acid crystals in the joints and organs...so it wouldn't make sense for it to be a bad source of protein if it helps fight uric acid issues. Problem I noticed with giving alfalfa is it makes my bin stink like ammonia. I'm pretty sure it's from the nitrogen content that processes into ammonia. If I don't feed alfalfa or only a small amount of it I don't get the ammonia stink.

Depending on when the alfalfa was cut, it ranges from 12 to15% crude protein (late cut), and 16-20% crude protein (late bud, early bloom stage), and has a 20 to 28% fiber content. Compared to average grass which has ~8.5% crude protein and ~31.5% fiber.

I'm not sure how much research was put into that Lugarti Dubia Diet roach chow I linked previously, but their fiber content is a maximum of 8.9%, which lead me to start looking for links between fiber and ammonia. I found this on a sciencedirect.com website discussing fiber and protein fermentation in the intestinal tract. Pigs and humans seem to be fairly close in so many ways, but as you said, comparing humans (thus pigs) may be a moot point. I back that up by something I was told by an exterminator a few years ago. We had roaches coming into the house around the wood stove insert (not the kitchen), so I'm assuming they migrated from the neighbors rental house (assuming is being polite, I know it did), but we needed to treat them just the same before we could even attempt to rent our house out. The exterminator explained to me (you know me, always curious and asking questions) that roaches and humans process protein differently, which is why the poison they put down for roaches is not a risk to humans or pets. We could ingest the roach poison safely...I'm not positive but I think he may have even licked some. Anyway, the poison messes with how the roaches process protein, and it spreads through the roach body and kills them, and the other roaches feed on the dead roach, it just spreads and kills the colony. So, I am not sure anything we say comparing human protein/nutrition is going to relate but so much to the robustly built roach. I also read a really cool thing on the website I linked yesterday with the FAQ. The reason roaches would be more apt to survive radiation than humans is human cells are always splitting and replacing other cells, and radiation is much more toxic to cells that are in this splitting phase (which is why chemo-radiation works so well on cancer cells as cancer cells split abnormally fast). Roaches only go into this cell splitting phase when they are molting for the most part, so their cells are not as easily effected by radiation. Although those roaches that are molting would be effected negatively by radiation just as we would. Anyway, is the info I found about fiber/protein, nitrogen and ammonia. Hopefully it will help you understand the ammonia issues with your colonies a little better.

Overall, inclusion of DF (dietary fiber) and reduction of CP (crude protein) in pig diets seems to be an effective nutritional strategy that may counteract the negative effects of protein fermentation in the pig gut by reducing ammonia concentration, shifting N (nitrogen) excretion pathways in the gut and minimizing the negative impact of intensive pig production on the environment.
Full link:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0377840115300766#kwd_2

Although the bottom line simple way to tell if your roaches have too much protein in their diet from what I read on the FAQ page for roaches by Professor Joe Kunkel at the University of Massachusetts, he said if the roach frass is white, it indicates their diet is too high in protein. Of course he didn't expand to say what healthy frass should look like so I e-mailed him asking him this among other things.

 

[Rankins]

Yeah, most the plant based purines are pretty low, most dont contain any. Then there is alfalfa that actually helps with gout...but the ammonia stink is horrible if fed in larger amounts. It really is too bad because the benefits could help bearded dragons if they eat the roaches. I suppose I could gut load a bunch of them in a separate container, but I like simplicity.
Orin McMonigle has written a bunch of books on insects and has a couple (or more) roaches named after him. I have considered buying some of his books, just haven't been motivated to spend the money. I'm actually a Facebook friend but have never contacted him...I would feel a bit strange about it
Forgot to mention the white frass is probably uric acid from too much purines. I haven't noticed any white frass in any of my bins..but I don't look through it.

 

[Rankins]

I think this might be Orin's forum. I haven't subscribed to it, I don't have much time today to research until later tonight. Ill have to see what I need to do to join the forum later.
http://www.roachforum.com

 

[Taffer]

I just checked my adult breeder colony and there is a little white looking frass, but most of it is brown (yippie!). I'd been feeding the Fluker Farms High Calcium cricket food that had ~20% crude protein as their dry food, but now I'm thinking the adults were intentionally avoiding it or I was feeding enough alternative fruits & veggies to avoid an issue. I put a small pile of the new Lugarti's Dubia Diet in last night and it appears it was attacked with a passion, where the cricket food was not going away very quickly. I dumped pretty much all of the dry food and put fairly equal amounts of both the cricket and roach chow to see if there is a team favorite when there are equal amounts and I can ball park measure the amounts eaten.

I do have to give credit to the Lugarti team on their choice of water proof/moisture proof buckets! I had to struggle a bit to get the lid off the container, and the term 'struggle' is putting it mildly. I'm not trying to be a sexist, but without some sort of mechanical tool to open the bucket, I think most women would have a really hard time opening the container by hand. I'm going to have to find a smaller container that I can keep smaller amounts in that is much easier to open, like cottage cheese container I was using for water crystals. Yep, that will work nicely!

I'm probably going to have to saturate the alfalfa plugs I picked up a couple weeks ago. I don't see any evidence of the roaches feeding on them. I think they are just too tightly compressed to be edible. If I threw a plug hard enough I'm pretty sure I could put it through the sheetrock wall with little damage to the alfalfa plug itself.

Since my colony is small, I could use this as an alfalfa pellet without purchasing an entire 40 pound bag. It comes in 5 or 15 pound bags. Of course with the colonies that Rankins has, he may be rivaling alfalfa pellet use near horse size proportions! :laughhard: :laughhard: :laughhard: :laughhard:
https://www.amazon.com/Zilla-Reptile-Terrarium-Substrate-15-Pounds/dp/B001OVD61E/ref=cm_rdp_product

 

[Taffer]

I think this might be Orin's forum. I haven't subscribed to it, I don't have much time today to research until later tonight. Ill have to see what I need to do to join the forum later.
http://www.roachforum.com

OK...I just have to share this for a laugh. I went to that forum and the very first posting I saw was "Marijuana for Roaches?".

I don't partake, but first, why would someone who doesn't use marijuana have it in the first place, and why would you even think about giving it to roaches. That said, it is kind of a funny question, although some of the responses were overly serious. (shaking my head)

 

[Rankins]

That little bag of alfalfa costs almost as much as 50 lbs of alfalfa meal at the feed store. I have 50 lbs of pellets and 50 lbs of the alfalfa meal. The pellets were purchased for my grass (the kind in my yard) it contains a plant hormone in it called tricontinol and makes things grow crazy fast. I have an acre of land and alfalfa is cheap fertilizer.
Soaking the pellets in water or orange juice will soften them up so you can feed them to the roaches. They pellets usually are compressed and held together by molasses...not the kind that dig holes in my yard, but I have called them nasty names before.
Don't try to grind up the pellets in a coffee grinder. I burned up two because sometimes I'm a slow learner and have to do things twice to catch a clue

 

[Taffer]

That little bag of alfalfa costs almost as much as 50 lbs of alfalfa meal at the feed store. I have 50 lbs of pellets and 50 lbs of the alfalfa meal. The pellets were purchased for my grass (the kind in my yard) it contains a plant hormone in it called tricontinol and makes things grow crazy fast. I have an acre of land and alfalfa is cheap fertilizer.
Soaking the pellets in water or orange juice will soften them up so you can feed them to the roaches. They pellets usually are compressed and held together by molasses...not the kind that dig holes in my yard, but I have called them nasty names before.
Don't try to grind up the pellets in a coffee grinder. I burned up two because sometimes I'm a slow learner and have to do things twice to catch a clue

ROFL...molasses was hilarious.

The reason I was looking for smaller bags is when we moved out of our house in Virginia Beach, we rented my sisters-in-law grandmothers house not long after her grandma went into an assisted living home in an attempt to move closer to my family with our young daughter. Grandma thought she was going to be coming back so about 75% of grandma's stuff is still in the attic and various storage places, and moving from an 1800+ sq. ft. home to a 1200 sq. ft. home little storage due to what grandma left behind, we're so pinched for space that it's ridiculous. God bless my wife, she has gotten so creative with organizing to make the most of the space we have, but our house looks like we are borderline hoarders as it is already. There isn't anywhere outside to store the alfalfa without it becoming infested (and so on and so on), thus why I have to buy small. My wife is already not thrilled with 3 bins for Dubia (one feeder bin downstairs, one breeding colony upstairs, and the quarantine bin with the moldy Dubia). I'm pretty sure I could feed those quarantined Dubia any day now, but I'll give them another week or two to be sure, although they look perfectly fine now.

Coffee grinder debacle...(shaking my head). Can't say I've not repeated mistakes...hoping that repeating the same actions would produce different outcomes.

 

[Rankins]

Well in my favor I will say the coffee grinders were two different brands, so I had hopes the results would be different. They kind of were, they broke in different ways. But they ended up in the same place...the garbage. So at least that was able to be reproduced exactly.
Totally understand the space limitations. I have run out of places to put my reptile enclosures. I have been considering buying a storage shipping container to turn into my reptile building. It won't happen soon, but hopefully eventually. Seriously though, breeding roaches is a lot easier than breeding reptiles. The money actually would be easier to make off of them. Minimal expense with high production at a rapid rate. Without even really trying hard the roach colony will grow fairly quick after you have several adults.
I use to help occasionally at a cricket farm a very long time ago. It was pretty labor intensive and the operating costs were pretty high. Roaches are much, much easier.
When I was breeding crickets I thought it was fun for about 6 months...but I got fed up with how much time and room it took up. If I only was focused on one species of roach it wouldnt take up much room. But I'm growing 3 (soon to be 4) species so it does take up a lot of space. I just wish I could feed off all the Dubia's. I really don't like them...mainly because they are ugly and they reproduce a lot slower than the orange heads. But they also don't seem very smart....
The ivory heads are pretty funny,... When they know your going to feed them they scramble out of hiding to wait for the food dish. They are massive nymphs. A medium sized nymph would be too large for an adult bearded dragon. A very cool species...

 

[Taffer]

Rankins buddy, you crack me up!

If you truly want to get rid of your Dubia, just start feeding off all the adult females exclusively. Would that be enough to decline the colony slowly into oblivion, and create a prebuilt bin for your next infestation?

My colony is starting to grow significantly. I started with 20 females and 10 males (well, that survived after the first week anyway). Dubia Deli gives free samples out, up to 3 different sizes, so I picked two of the biggest sizes, and one smaller. I think just about all of these have grown into fully grown adults, so I'm guessing I have 100-150 adults now, and I can't open the bin without seeing nymphs that are 1/4" or less, so the nymphs are streaming in steadily. The first set of nymphs are just about 2 months old so they are well on their way to adulthood. It is SO MUCH easier to breed and maintain roaches than crickets. As much as crickets die, I'm surprised they are not extinct LOL.

I am still tempted to get rid of the Dubia for the Orange Heads, but I just don't think that would be a wise choice since I want to make it a small business for my 6 YO, although my wife has reservations because if my daughter goes to school talking about roaches, 99.9% of the people will think we have an infestation in our house instead of a contained "non-pest" type of roach, so that may have to wait a little bit for her to dig into this. Anyway, right now it looks like most of the searches for feeder roaches are for Dubia, so that would be the door opening, and once they are to the craigslist or e-bay site, toss in the information about Orange Head roaches as well as a better alternative.

How long do Orange Head roaches get, and how long do Ivory Head roaches get?

I'm not sure I understood that last paragraph. It sounded like you were saying the Ivory Head roaches scramble OUT of hiding, like they are suicidal and running to the dish so they can be the next meal. :0) Did you mean the reptiles scramble out of hiding when you are feeding the Ivory Heads? You're forgiven...we should be sleeping right now. That was a retype...the first time I said we should both be in bed right now, but that just didn't sound right LOL. I had to retype the original fouled up sentence though to share the laugh.

 

[Taffer]

I also see I got a response back from Professor Joe Kunkel at the University of Massachusetts with a few roach questions. WOW...he linked his roach research references, and assuming they are all him and not his father (well, not references to a Jr., so I guess it has to be him), they reach back as far as 1966. This man has been posting research papers on roaches for 50+ years! I feel inept to even open a discussion with the man about roaches (where is the ":im not worthy:" smilie emote?)

Anyway, this is what he had to say about roaches and protein:
The 4% protein diet should satisfy all stages (stages = nymphs and adults). You can produce some happy medium with a minimum of work by allowing them to choose their own diet but forcing them to get some of their moisture from vegetables such as carrots and potatoes that provide more filler that is low in protein and provide a restricted amount of the ~20% protein from readily available dog/rat chow.

Joe also said - All cockroaches have symbiotic bacteria living in their fat body which synthesize most of what are vitamins for vertebrates, since they can not produce them themselves. The cockroach can eat a very un-nutritious diet and thrive.

I asked him to expand on that answer. I'm not sure if all those fancy ingredients in the Dubia Diet I linked yesterday actually make any difference to the health of a roach or not after that statement. Does it help, or is it sales fluff? News at 11:00!

 

[Rankins]

I would feed off all the female Dubia, but they are way too big for a adult Rankins. My rankins are all under 8" and they are done growing. It's because they are 100% pure bloodlines and were not crossed with bearded dragons.

Yeah, I was saying when I feed the ivory heads their food they scramble out of hiding to get it. They do it before I even had time to set their food down. The ivory heads and orange heads get about 2" but it's their stockiness that is really impressive. This is an ivory head nymph
[ximg]85426 9701546914[/ximg]
Roaches do like to select their food items and a few care sheets mention that. I don't do it that way because all my food is mixed together and I intentionally did it because of simplicity. The roaches are still multiplying fast so I'm not sure if it would make much of a difference. I don't have to use water crystals either because I use the orange juice to wet the food.
I also have read about the gut bacteria, and I'm pretty sure thats how the nitrogen gets converted to ammonia. Roaches will still grow and reproduce even if fed cardboard or newspaper...but obviously it is better to supply them better food.
Since your growing Dubia's they will be easier to sell once your colony is established. Most people don't know about orange heads. All everyone talks about are Dubia's even though there are better roaches out there.
I have also read that people are feeding too much protien to their roaches. But I'm not sure if they were referring to plant protiens. It mainly mentions dog/cat food.

 

[Taffer]

Dang, that is a BIG nymph.

I was actually posting on another forum where people were saying their roaches were not eating the alfalfa pellets, so I told them what you do with soaking them in with the orange juice.

Do you not have any reptiles big enough to eat full grown adult Dubia, or you just don't have enough reptiles to eat them fast enough? All this time I was thinking Rankins was the name of one of your reptiles, not s breed. Shows my ignorance. :0)

Oh, I'm sure better food makes a difference, I was just curious how much difference it made compared to the amount of time, effort and money put into finding better food and such. Sometimes I wish I ate as well as my roaches do...

 

[Rankins]

All I have are the 4 Rankins dragons that eat roaches. They are in the same genus as bearded dragons, but a different species. They are much smaller than a bearded dragon. All my other reptiles eat rats. Basically I have the roaches because I like them and can sell em
This is one of the rankins...

 

[Taffer]

Adorable little fella/girl. Wow, that really helps explain why your roaches are not getting fed as fast as I thought...I thought all of your reptiles were eating them, not just 4 smaller dragons. :0)

Do you breed rats as well, or just roaches?

And for everybody who was jealous of my bearded dragon because she pretty much never poops in her enclosure, we paid for that in spades today. If the aquarium would have fit in the oven to sterilize it...

 

[Rankins]

Sorry you had such a mess to clean up.
Yep, only 4 tiny little bug eating mouths to feed. My Dubia roaches are so numerous I rarely give the rankins orange heads. So that colony is massive...I don't even know how many are in the bin. But it's pretty heavy. I keep trying to guess how many I have...I keep changing my assessment, so I'll just say I have a whole lot

Yeah, I breed rats also, only about 6 mo out of the year. I try to stock up on them during the lizards 4 mo brumation. I don't feed live, so after they get respiratory therapy with CO2 they go in the freezer.