Remember when I posted about Sydney getting Lucille. A very lovely reader emailed me. She told me about her beardies (when you own a bearded dragon you get to call them super cool nicknames like beardies) She talked to me about cages, lighting and feeding. She mentioned to me that she breeded roaches to feed to her sons lizard and that if I was interested in doing the same to let her know and she'd help me get started.
I email-smiled politely and said no thank you, that I was going to try crickets because well, they weren't roaches.
She offered to send me some of her roaches to start my own colony. (SO nice right ?)
ANY hew. Lucille was eating 3-4 crickets a day and we were fine. The pet store is a few blocks away. You can get a dozen for 1.00. I had taught myself at this point how to handle the crickets and after only having Lucille for a couple of days that was enough.
About 5 days later Lucille acclimated to our lovely home and began eating 25-35 crickets a sitting.
That's a LOT more expensive than 3-4 and who wants to go to the pet store every day to buy them. I googled and researched how to breed crickets. We tried. It was a process and after about 5 days realized crickets weren't going to work. (there is a process to breeding crickets)
I emailed the girl back and said..ok..what's the deal with the roaches. She selflessly took the time to educate me on the whole deal. She then packed and mailed them out.
When the package came I opened it and there was a large pretzel container with hundreds and hundreds of roaches. All sizes. adults, feeders, and even some tiny little baby ones. I had no idea what to expect.
Quite an awesome sight to behold.
I had to handle them as they were dying off through the mailing process. So that whole...ewww...creep me out thing with roaches was immediately eradicated.
I'm kind of smitten with them now. Really. We have a relationship a bit like the roach on Wall-e. :)
Thing to know is this. Roaches are meatier than crickets and worms so they are better for Lucille. They don't jump. or fly. They don't bite as they are vegetarians. Crickets will bite your lizard if left with her for too long. and crickets will kill each other. Roaches take care of each other. If they happen to get out of the bin I'm keeping them in....they will die. They can't live alone outside of their colony and especially not in this dry cold climate. or in my laundry room because that's where they are located currently. (through the cold months any ways)
Basically they are just a really fast potato bug. At least that's what I'm telling myself. :)
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| Housing and food. Egg crates, cheerios and carrots. The white wad on the one lid is a wet paper towel. That's what I give them for water....for now. |
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| The big black ones are the females, the black ones with wings are the males. The smaller yellow ones were the tiny babies that are growing and the black dots are either new babies or poop :) |
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| This is a newly hatched baby since getting these guys. :) I named this one Newt. |
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| Lucille. She's getting so big. |
I thought that I had learned, but sometimes need to be reminded...."don't knock it til you try it"
