Lesson 5- Dry Food and Gut Loading/Dusting
Nutritional Requirements
The key requirements for growth in cricket and cockroaches is protein, calcium, and energy. Researchers studying locusts and other insects found that they would continue to eat relentlessly until their daily protein requirements have been met. Once a locust has eaten a set amount of protein, it stops eating even if other food is provided. The same concept works for humans and other animals. If you provide high quality food with high protein, their overall food consumption drops which saves you money. Having a sufficient calcium intake, is important for an animal which removes calcium on a regular basis by shedding its skin (molts).
Food consumption by baby cockroaches is relatively small, but will significantly increase when they reach medium size. Food consumption reaches its maximum at the young adult stage (active egg production) and then gradually decreases with age.
A wide range of pellet dry foods can be used to feed cockroaches. Some people use, cat/dog/chicken layer/guinea pig/rabbit pellets. This becomes confusing when you go to a pet store and are confronted with this wide range of food types and different brands. My preference is cat/dog dry food mixed with Chicken Layer pellets. The chicken layer pellets have high calcium as they are used by laying chickens for egg production.
Our manual provides the nutritional content of a range of different dry food types (ie, adult dog food, puppy dog food, cat food, chicken pellets etc), and provides some basic rules to help you choose best nutritionally and the most cost effective.
Dry Food Recipe
For a dry food recipe, visit our website at our Dry Food page.
Gut Loading
Gut loading is a method of boosting the nutritional content of feeder insects prior to providing them to your animals for consumption. The nutritional and moisture content of crickets can be increased by providing them with high quality foods to boost their nutrient, energy and moisture levels. Your animals then benefit through ingestion of these enriched crickets and cockroaches. Animals that have been relocated, are ill or under stress would particularly benefit from gut loading and dusting.
Dusting
Dusting is a process of adding nutritionally rich powder to the outside of your feeder insects. Again only a small amount is used so purchasing a commercially produced product is an economical way of adding nutrient to your animal’s diet.
Information in Our Manual…
Our manuals show a number of techniques how to quickly and efficiently grade your cockroaches (sort them into different size groups), gut load/dusting and how to store them temporarily so they are readily available at all times. Below is a summary of the “Food and Water” sections of our Cockroach Breeding manual:
- 7 different methods/tools to feed cockroaches to your animals quickly and easily (and filter them to the right size).
- Learn essential nutrients for cockroach development, how to purchase food in bulk and store/process them properly to save wastage and money. Food recipes for standard and fast growth, gut loading and dusting.
- Tables outlining the nutritional content of key food groups such as dog, cat and chicken layer dry foods.
- Detailed instructions and photos how to build temporary storage containers and filtering devices.
- 3 different food/water dispensers to choose from which covers small and large scale production.
- Our automated feeding/watering dispensers, allows you to feed cockroaches for over 2 weeks unattended if necessary (i.e. good for going away on holidays). They are inexpensive to build, durable and designed not to spill. They dispense food at a controlled rate which saves money, reduces the frequency for refilling and improves hygiene.
The Worlds most Comprehensive Cockroach Breeding Guide
With around 100 pages and 145 color photos our cockroach breeding book set the benchmark for cockroach breeding. To see why our book is the most comprehensive book you can buy on the topic, click Here or to purchase click Here. In this link we will provide you with:
- A Book sample with includes the books contents.
- 50 techniques our books will provide you to save time and effort.
- How to access free videos when you purchase the books
- How to breed crickets and cockroaches using the same materials.
Guided online tour of the Worlds most comprehensive Cricket Book
Why not Turn an Expense Into Income?
For Information and advice on commercial production, Click Here. We have been breeding insects to Zoos, Wildlife carers, pet stores and the public for over 14 years.
We can show you how to build a profitable insect business. See below how you can follow our latest project converting a 20 foot caravan into a profitable insect business.
