Zapping crickets

[healthybeardie]

Crickets really aren't that bad once you find a system :shock: that works well:

Escapees immediately get "zapped" - a hard slap to the cricket on the surrounding ground - not too hard where you completely smash them - but hard enough to stun them into submission - too paralyzed to hop anymore but still moving, you then pick them up, put it in the baggy and feed to the beardie. Works like a charm every time! My beardie eats 100+ every day. I average about 10 escapees a day during feeding time that I zap and enjoy the most feeding them to Luther.

However, due to the extreme cost of buying, I have started a dubia colony and look forward to making the switch

 

[dmglakewood]

I never had a problem with crickets. The escapees were either torn apart by my dog or I just grabbed them and put them back in the container.

As for feeding I would take a ziplock baggie and put calcium in it. I would make sure the bag is covered 100% with powder and I would dump out the excess. (I found that if I left the excess in the bag the dumb crickets would end up killing themselfs by getting stuck in it). Then I would take a tube of crickets and shake them into the bag. Simply close the bad shake it up and dump them in to the feeding tank.

The only things I hated about crickets were the price, the smell and trying to keep them alive. It seems that no matter what 10-20% of them would die for no apparent reason at all.

You're right though once you have a system that works it makes things a lot easier. I use the same kind of system with my roaches instead of using tubes though I just pick them up and place them in the ziplock baggie.