Crickets are among the most nutrient-rich meals for your pets. Their feeding also determines their level of nutrition to the pet feeding on them. The nutrients they would get from their diet in the wild should be included in their captive diet.
A crickets’ natural diet consists of plants, meat, grains, produce, and protein. In the wild, crickets eat insect larvae, aphids, flowers, seeds, leaves, fruits, and grasses. They also eat grains like rice cereal, alfalfa and wheat germ and packaged foods like dry cat and dog food, reptile food.
What do crickets eat?
Since crickets are omnivorous, they essentially eat plants and meat, allowing them to consume various meals. A healthy diet for crickets is just as important whether you have them as pets or use or as feeders for other pets like geckos and snakes. Crickets can consume a wide variety of fresh and dried foods, so there is never a scarcity.
However, provide fresh foods to crickets sparingly because they can quickly mold. House crickets and wild crickets both have a wide range of alternatives. A fun fact is that they can consume anything literally, from furniture, clothing, and fabric, to other home goods.
The foods they enjoy eating most are listed below.
- Do you have any leftover salad made with romaine lettuce? Feed it to your crickets instead of throwing it in the trash. Potassium, vitamin K, and vitamin A are all abundant in lettuce and are beneficial to crickets.
- Carrots: Both peeled and cooked carrots are a favorite food of crickets. Due to their high beta-carotene and water content, carrots are good for crickets.
- Cabbage: Give your crickets the outer cabbage leaves you usually don’t eat; they’ll get their vitamin K and C from these leaves.
- Squash and potatoes: Squash and potatoes are starchy foods you can feed crickets with your leftover potato peelings.
- Commercial food manufactured exclusively for insects is called “cricket chow.”
- Fruits, such as apples, oranges, bananas, grapes, and berries, make an excellent meal for crickets. Did you know that apples are a good source of water for keeping crickets hydrated? Vitamin C is found in oranges. Bananas contain a lot of potassium; before giving apples and bananas to crickets, cut them into bits.
- Seeds and nuts – Almonds, peanuts, pumpkin seeds, and raw sunflower seeds are examples of nuts you can use to feed crickets. These seeds are very nourishing and tasty. You may also feed crickets with your favorite meals, such as bread, cornflakes, and biscuits. Crickets seem to be able to eat almost everything. However, don’t feed the crickets too much of these meals.
- Grains: Alfalfa, rice cereal, and wheat germ are beneficial to crickets.
- Food for animals: dry cat food, dry dog food, and food for reptiles. Since they enjoy it, you should finely mince cat and dog food before giving it to crickets.
- Greens are good for crickets, including kale, broccoli, mustard greens, dandelion leaves, and collard greens.
- Crops, mushrooms, mulch, ladybugs, and other little insects are among the items that wild crickets frequently consume and can be found in your yards and on your lawns.
- Wild crickets love to eat mulch from plant stems and grass clippings.
- In fields and forests, wild crickets hunt for and consume prey like insect eggs, pupae, dead animals, and decomposing plant matter.
If many wild crickets come into your yard, they can ruin your veggies and crops and seriously harm your rows of seedlings.
Foods to avoid feeding crickets
Just like all the other creatures, crickets have some do’s and don’ts. For example, certain foods and non-food items can be detrimental to crickets if consumed. Such things consist of:
- Cricket can be killed by vinegar in approximately a minute if it is mixed with water at a high enough concentration. As a result, avoid feeding the mixture to crickets unless you intend to kill them.
- Saltwater has also been found to have a devastating function in this insect’s life. Therefore, it should not be fed to crickets in raw form or when combined with water because it is known to hurt and kill them.
- Lemon is an acidic citrus fruit by nature. Cricket will be instantly killed if it becomes intoxicated.
Keep these food items away from your crickets for their safety.
How to feed crickets
You can keep crickets in an aquarium, a deep container, or a cage. However, no matter where you keep your crickets, you must know how to feed them properly. Below is the best way to feed them.
Securely set the food you feed your crickets in a clear, shallow container on the ground. Then, to stop mold from growing, regularly clean the food container to eliminate garbage and dead crickets.
If you didn’t know, crickets cannot swim and will drown if you put a bowl of water in your crickets’ cage or container. Put paper towels, cotton balls, and sponges in the crickets’ cage after wetting them with water so they can sip water without drowning.
Alternatively, you may add stones to a shallow container of water to assist the crickets in staying balanced.
You must routinely provide food to prevent your crickets from feeding on one another.
To prevent mold growth, remove any uneaten food from the cage. Mold is very easy to grow on fresh foods. Keep food and drink separately to stay dry since food will grow mold if it gets moist.
You don’t need to quantify the amount of food you give crickets because they self-regulate how much they eat.
How to gut load crickets?
This entire process is relatively straightforward despite how complex it may seem. Simply place the crickets you wish to gut load in a separate enclosure, provide them with food and water, and let them work their magic for one to two days.
Using a jar with a bare bottom and liberally sprinkling your chosen combination over the entire floor is the ideal method for doing this. This will ensure that your insects continue to consume until they are nearly bursting, which is what you want.
Be sure to take care of them the same way you would any other crickets: quickly remove any dead ones, and if you’re using a shallow water dish to hydrate them rather than a hydrating gel or veggies, you should change the water every day. For the best results, perishable goods should be taken out before they spoil.
After a few days, you need to add the crickets to your reptile’s enclosure and dust them with calcium supplements. Your animal will be healthier as a result, and you can be confident that you are providing for their health to the best of your ability. In addition, you will quickly be pleased with the outcomes.
Should I dust crickets?
Lightly dust the crickets with vitamin and calcium supplements. However, you shouldn’t do it on the same day. Instead, alternate calcium with vitamin D3 and a multivitamin supplement every other feeding day to ensure that your pet’s crickets are always powdered with either calcium or vitamins.
Problems when feeding crickets and their fixes
Because they are not very tall, crickets can easily drown if the water they drink is too deep. Consider placing some water, a few small rocks, or aquarium stones inside a shallow lid from a yogurt container to give a secure drinking environment for your crickets. This will give the crickets a secure foothold on the pebbles and a safe route to obtain their drinking water.
Some cricket keepers would place cotton balls in the habitat after submerging them in water. This gives insects a secure way to drink water. To prevent grains and dry food from becoming wet and becoming more susceptible to mold, it is advised to keep the food supply isolated from the water source.
Conclusion
Crickets don’t have fussy eating habits, which is a pro for people who are rearing them but soon turns into a drawback if you’re attempting to get rid of them.
Thanks to this advice, you should now better understand what to expect and what they consume. Use this information to prepare you for anything thrown your way!