Place a shallow dish of water with a sponge in it, or a dish full of commercial "cricket water" (the non-fortified kind, as the calcium loaded kind will kill the crickets if given long term). Another dish that the crickets (including pinheads) will be able to get in and out of easily should be placed in the cage to contain food. Another dish with and inch or two of moist (not wet) soil will serve as an egg depository.
Feed the crickets a mixture of whole grain cereal, a small amount of dog or cat food, and fresh dark green leafy vegetables (wash carefully). A bit of carrot, or other veggies may also be well accepted. Offer the moist foods seperately from the dry, and remove once a day to prevent mold growth. Mold is a serious threat to the cricket colony. Feeding your crickets a nutritious diet at all times ensures that you'll have a high survival rate, and that you won't need to seperately gut-load them before feeding them to your animals.
Just add the crickets--25 or 50 of them should be plenty. If they are not already adults, you may have to wait a while for them to grow up. Once you have chirping males, with wings, and adult females with their long ovapositor (the tube sticking out from their hind end), they'll be ready to breed and lay eggs. Give them three or four days, then remove the soil container, and replace it with a fresh one. This serves two purposes: The first is that it prevents the adult crickets from eating the eggs. The second is that if you hatch the eggs laid within a few days in another container, all of the crickets in that container will be around the same size--this is very convenient for feeding your reptiles.
You can place the egg-filled soil container into a new tote, set up the same way, and wait for them to hatch. Keep the soil slightly moist. If you want to save the eggs, you can simply place the soil container in your refrigerator for several weeks, then bring it out later to hatch the eggs. Be sure to check occasionally to moisten the soil, if necessary (don't let it get too wet, nor completely dry out). Misting the soil with a spray bottle works well for controlling the amount of moisture you add. Your crickets will breed and grow most quickly at around 80 degrees, but they'll also be fine at 70. Don't allow them to overheat, temperatures over 90 will kill them. Babies are particularly sensitive to heat. If they get too cool, they will probably stop breeding and be less active. Freezing temperatures will kill them.
Once all of the adults in your original container have died, clean it out and scrub it thoroughly, then set it up with the soil container that was last in there to hatch more. Be sure to do this every time, or you will find that crickets develop a really horrible odor. You can do this with however many seperate totes you want, keeping 4 or 5 going at once if you have a lot of reptiles. The number of baby crickets you hatch depends on how many adults you started with, of course.
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