Feeder Breeding To Become!!

I have been thinking this through and have done lots of research on raising feeders. I will be raising the basics such as: Mealworms, Crickets, Mice and/or Rats.

Any suggestions? Thanks!

when it comes to meal/superworms...be careful using oatmeal as substrate....the first year i did it, i ended up with a serious moth problem

Post this in the insect area for more responses.

You will need to clean out the dead crickets every few days. This is very important. The ammonia from the dead crickets will soon kill the rest if you don't.

What's your reason for raising this stuff, for your own collection or something more?

for crickets , read this
http://www.arachnoboards.com/ab/showthread.php?257876-Odorless-Breeding-of-Crickets

Raising mealworms if fairly straight forward. I use wheat bran for the most part, and for a water source I add sliced up carrot (which I recommend blotting with a paper towel beforehand to wick away excess moisture to prevent mold). Some people use three or even four separate bins or dwarers for each stage of the mealworms' lifecycle. They go through the general beetle life cycle as they are beetles after all. What we know as mealworms are just the larvae.

I recommend getting sterlite bins or even one of those sterlite drawer systems. Start off by keeping the mealworms in a bin or drawer and allowing them all the pupate (this will ensure that you have enough beetles to kickstart the colony. Then, when they pupate, start taking out the pupae and put them in a second bin or drawer and about a week or so later, you'll have a bunch of darkling beetles. Let the beetles go about laying eggs and reproducing, and then a few months later, they will all die off. Take the bin that they were in and keep the substrate. This will have nearly microscopic little mealworm larvae in it. Just feed them like you'd usually do with the bigger mealworms and allow them to grow til they are big enough to either feed or do whatever you're planning on doing with them.

Some people go as far as to cut out the bottom of a bin or drawer and replace it with a fine mesh screen. This is for the bin which will hold the adult beetles. They will lay eggs, and the eggs will fall through the screen, or hatch and the new larvae will fall through the screen and into the mealworm bin or drawer. I plan on getting some fine mesh, though nothing to flimsy as mealworms will chew through it, and replacing the bottom of my adult beetle drawer with it.

Anyways, remember to always blot any fresh food used a water source thoroughly to avoid it molding in the bran. I've had to pick out an old carrot covered in moldy bran as a result of not blotting it before hand. I advise avoiding this at all costs as its detrimental to the colony (it's also not particularly pleasant for us people to have to deal with either).

I had a mealworm farm for a year I was over welcomed by the number that were being I was selling them to the pet store I was having some fun I t surprised me how fast they could go through full sized carrots but them moisture got in to the colony.I mad a mighty problem with mites they over ran everything I had to start from step one now I have many 200beetles.but one the up side they are breeding fast so I might not take as long to get high numbers.