Feeder Insect Information

Raising some of your own feeders can not only help with the cost of keeping many lizards, it can help guarantee you always have a food source available during inclement weather, or if a bug shipment gets delayed.

I do not attempt to raise all the feeder insects I use, but I do raise a fair amount of them. Some bugs are just too aggravating for me to raise in large amounts, but I have produced several types of feeder insects myself, including crickets, mealworms, superworms, waxworms, hissing roaches, and lobster roaches.
Currently the only insects I am producing continuously are the roaches, but I will try to outline the basic care and breeding for several types of feeders for those interested in trying their hand at it.

Click on the links to go to the page for each type of insect. I'll get all the pages up as I can. This page will take a while to complete.

Madagascar Hissing Roaches

Hissing roaches make good feeders and are very prolific. In addition they can be very interesting insects to observe. One possible drawback with this species is the adult size. In my collection I have nothing that can eat a 3" long hisser, so once they reach full adult size they are just breeders and get to die naturally of old age.

Here is a series of pictures of a hisser giving birth. Unfortunately I saw her just after she had delivered her litter. I did however, get pics of her apparently excreting some type of viscous substance, which the nymphs were feeding on. The first 3 pictures show this happening.
I haven't found anything written up about this so I am not sure at this point what the substance is. The nymphs also ate the entire egg case before they dispersed.
I counted 45 nymphs in this litter, but they were piled up somewhat and I couldn't count the ones underneath. A good number at any rate.

Lobster Roaches

Lobster roaches are an excellent feeder species.
They are smaller as adults than the hissers, only reaching about 1 1/4" total length. They are also much softer bodied than the hissers making them more digestable and easier to eat.
I no longer raise lobsters, but at the peak of my production my colony numbered over 20,000.
During that time I was producing enough to meet all my own feeder needs as well as sell several hundred to a thousand per week on average
I am fairly sure their potential lifespan is quite a bit shorter than the 2-3 years of hissers, but their potential for breeding more than makes up for this.
The fact that the adults are still small enough to be feeders is an added plus in most collections.These roaches do have wings as adults, and while they do not really fly, they can flutter (even that is rare), so a lid is recommended for their cage. They can also climb glass like the hissers, so I normally apply a band of vaseline around the top as well.