Mary Allen
Crickets belong to the real crickets. They carry long antennae and have a sturdy body, rounded rump, and strong and long hind legs.
General Information
The body of the house cricket has a yellow-brown coloration, there are dark patterns on the head and neck. The crickets are visually reminiscent of grasshoppers, but their coloring is not green and their jumping legs are less strong.
Male crickets reach a body length between 1.6 and 2.5 centimeters. In contrast to the males, the females have a laying ear on their abdomen, with which they deposit their eggs in the ground. This additional body part makes them almost 1.5 centimeters longer.
The males can be recognized by acoustic noises because they chirp loudly when they are sexually mature. The chirping is especially audible in the evening and at night.
Although house crickets have 4 wings, they rarely fly. They prefer to move around by hopping or running because their powerful jumping legs enable them to leap 30 centimeters in height and more.
Behave
House crickets are distributed all over the world and particularly like to live in the vicinity of housing developments. They, therefore, carry the additional name house crickets.
The insects are nocturnal and light-shy creatures. They seek hiding spots during the day but are also sometimes active in darker, shady places. House crickets feed on plants and animals. They get most of their water from their food, which is why they prefer water-rich food. They also like to eat waste, carrion, and food.
Attitude
Fauna boxes for feeding insects or aquariums are suitable for keeping house crickets. Removing the crickets from the boxes is particularly easy.
The containers should always be well closed, as the agile animals escape quickly. For good air circulation, the closed lid may have a hole that is secured against eruptions with some gauze.
House crickets hardly care about lighting, but they do want to live at 25°C and like moderate humidity. The room temperature is enough for them at night. In this way, keeping crickets succeeds without any problems
House crickets should not be kept in their carrier. A fauna box measuring at least 50 × 30 × 30 centimeters is sufficient for 500 adult animals.
The container requires weekly cleaning. This means that there are no bad smells and the insects remain of high quality for feeding. The optimal substrate for crickets consists of wood chips or sand.
The insects like hiding places made of crumpled paper or cardboard tubes. They are grateful for a feeding vessel. This is how you find escaped crickets again
House crickets jump high and are very lively. The loud chirping noises of the male house crickets quickly get on your nerves. Therefore, care should be taken when cleaning the container, removing, or feeding it.
If one of the animals does escape, they can be lured with double-sided tape, sticky traps, a heating pad, and a piece of apple. The nocturnal insects are sometimes found in the dark by searching the ground with a flashlight.
Breed
Even beginners can breed crickets without any problems. The insects are able to reproduce throughout the year.
Adult female house crickets live for about 10 weeks. They lay between 200 and 300 cricket eggs during this period. They are very small and white.
Process of Propagation
After mating, the females lay their eggs. For this, they need a substrate that can consist of sawdust, moist vegetables, or soil. This substrate is placed in suitable egg-laying containers, such as rectangular boxes.
The eggs move to a rearing vessel after 7 days. This should be as big as the fauna box of the house crickets, offering a sandy bottom and hiding places. The egg-laying container still needs moisture.
Depending on the temperature, the house cricket larvae hatch after 10 days to 2 months. They hatch particularly quickly at 35 °C and hatching takes the longest at 15 °C. The larvae go through around 10 molts over the next 2 to 9 months.
The duration of development also depends on the temperature and the keeping conditions. After this time, the house crickets are fully grown and sexually mature.
A sufficiently large container can accommodate around 1,000 house cricket larvae or 500 adult house crickets. The container can be a well-closing terrarium or a plastic fauna box. The floor consists of sand or sawdust and an opening with gauze ensures a good supply of oxygen.
Additional rearing containers are required for the undisturbed development of the larvae. The laying substrate together with the laid eggs goes into the rearing container, which is filled with some sand. Egg boxes or cardboard rolls serve as hiding places. If crickets have no place to retreat, the cricket larvae decimate themselves, because then they tend to cannibalism.