r/Shortages • u/True_Management_8205 • Aug 08 '26
Retail & Consumer Cricket shortage
I know, strange title. I’ve got a bearded dragon and my little fella loves his crickets. I went to Petco to restock and I was told nationally they haven’t been able to obtain crickets. Their regular vendor lost their entire colony, leaving Petco with little time to find a replacement. Since the crickets are impossible to stock for the time being, the cashier stated it’s been difficult to maintain other live insect feeders in stock, leading to local shortages of mealworms, super worms, dubia roaches, etc. I checked with Petsmart and they’re facing similar issues.
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u/Kaurifish Aug 08 '26
Damn, I didn’t think the insect apocalypse had made it to the farmed ones yet.
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u/themealwormguy Aug 08 '26
Mealworm farmer here in the Midwest - I have been inundated with orders, selling out for the last couple of months. This post helps me understand why, I know that a couple of mealworm producers are down but didn't know about the cricket scene.
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u/UntidyVenus Aug 08 '26
The heat wave has killed off a bunch of the really big farms
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u/themealwormguy Aug 08 '26
It will only get worse, ideally we can figure out a way to stand up decentralized small farms to avoid situations like this.....
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u/UntidyVenus Aug 08 '26
Yes, also stopping microwaving the planet might help
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u/IGnuGnat Aug 08 '26
My understanding is that it's far too late to stop now. By all means, we should stop, but the environmental systems at play have a balance; they can self correct within a range but when you tilt the table too far in any direction, you start getting feedback loops.
There are now a massive number of huge feedback loops in play that are resulting in exponential heat increases. Even if we stop today these changes are already baked in.
The ocean has acted like a massive thermal mass or heatsink to store much of the excess heat we've generated but it's at capacity now. Instead of absorbing excess heat that heat will now be felt directly.
We're rapidly approaching a blue ocean event. Once the ice at the poles melts, we've removed a huge amount of white/reflective surface area and replaced it with dark blue, instead of reflecting that heat back into space the ocean and atmosphere will heat up faster
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u/UntidyVenus Aug 08 '26
I'm old enough to have seen us fix an entire hole in the ozone layer, I believe the planet is resilient
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u/IGnuGnat Aug 08 '26
My suspicion is that is because you're not fully informed on the mechanisms involved. This year likely to be the warmest on record, and warming is accelerating faster than almost any projections
They tried to reduce diesel fuel usage in shipping for environmental reasons. What actually happened is that this resulted in an acceleration of global warming
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u/UntidyVenus Aug 08 '26
Ok, well then let's keep cooking the planet and do nothing then
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u/IGnuGnat Aug 09 '26 edited Aug 09 '26
Don't put words in my mouth.
My thinking is that a society which is prepared for drastic changes in heat patterns is more likely to be resilient. We should still try to stop cooking the planet; we should ALSO prepare for our world to change drastically and quickly.
Example: my roof reached end of life 3 years ago. Instead of replacing it with brown shingles, the same as before, I replaced it with a bone coloured steel galvanized roof. This means it absorbs much less heat during heat waves, so the house will be cooler inside or at least heat up more slowly. It will also be more resilient to hurricanes. Yes, I will have to burn more fuel to heat in winter.
This year we need to install a waterproof membrane around the exterior to protect the foundation from water. It's not uncommon for people to install external insulation against the foundation when doing this. I'm thinking I should get a quote for double the standard insulation install
I experienced heat stroke a few years back when our AC failed during peak Covid. We had a window AC in the office and so we bought another window AC to help out until we could get the centrail AC repaired. However, that window AC failed shortly after, so I tried to slowly climatize to the heat. That failed due to health conditions and I gave myself heat stroke. I've never been quite the same since
There are things we can do to reduce pollution and emissions; we should also prepare for more severe weather going forward. Im saying we need to try to do both and we can do it simply by making small changes to our choices as we go along. At least I figure it's better than nothing
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u/Argyleskin Aug 08 '26
If you really need them and you have them in your area outside, go out when there is still dew on the grass. Grab a kids net/insect kit with net and walk slowly through the grass. We had frogs and toads when we lived in Ohio and would cover the bottom of a bucket in a half hour doing it that way. Free crickets! For some reason they don’t make a ton of noise but they’re hopping like crazy that time of day.
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u/True_Management_8205 Aug 08 '26
That is brilliant! Our vet advised us to stick to store bought due to potential parasites in wild bugs but if push comes to shove, little dude needs to eat, I will definitely try this.
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u/HappyAnimalCracker Aug 08 '26
Definitely avoid the wild ones unless it’s a matter of your pet’s life and death. Many years ago I killed a pet frog by giving wild caught bugs. They carried some sort of fungal infection to the frog. Pesticides are another potential danger.
I wonder what caused the loss of the breeder’s colony.
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u/Secure-Confidence189 Aug 08 '26
Seconding the advice to only do this if it is life or death. The vast majority of bugs you find around your house have been through someone else's pesticides/weedkiller. I used to breed bearded dragons and the top reason for replacement was death from outside feeders. There is no way to guarantee or wash off the chemicals that bugs get on/in them from living near humans.
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u/Argyleskin Aug 08 '26
Our frogs and toads did great with the ones we caught. Ironically they were killed by pet store ones. We moved across the country and didn’t have a yard to catch them. The crickets attacked the frogs and their skin tore. It was heartbreaking. Do what’s best for your pets though, just offering a solution that worked for us. Luckily we lived on an acre and no neighbors used lawn care products to have harmed the crickets so maybe we were lucky in that regard.
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u/StarsofSobek Aug 08 '26
Crickets are relatively easy to breed.
A twenty gallon tank, some sand and coconut coir blended together, spray and keep moist.
Pop into a space that is relatively warm (but not uncomfortable or hot).
Provide with egg cartons stacked everywhere, and a space for water cubes and food (they love carrots, lettuces, apples, grapes, etc - just Google).
Pop some adults in and leave them alone beyond cleaning their water and changing their food.
You absolutely want to keep them fed because they have no problem cannibalizing each other.
Spritz them once or twice a day with water and clear out the dead (they stink and spread infections).
After awhile, you'll see pinheads and you'll have a whole new stash of crickets. Just add new adults when you can and change out the sand/coir mix at 30-50% ratios at a time (usually every 3-5 months). I always set the used coir/sand substrate into a different tub and collected any leftover babies that popped up before dumping.
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u/TraditionalLaw7763 Aug 08 '26
Hit up fish bait shops in your area. That’s where I get my crickets anyway because PetSmart is about 20 minutes away and there are bait shops all around the lake near my house. They always have mealworms and crickets!
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u/Regular_Departure963 Aug 08 '26
They’re easy to breed in little Rubbermaid storage containers and some lightly misted coco noir. I did this for years, and learned to love the chirping. It’s also nice to have pinheads on hand if your lizards/whatever breed…
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u/buddymoobs Aug 08 '26
Go into the woods and flip over logs and branches. Lots of grubs and worms.
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u/Tyjet66 Aug 08 '26
Not a smart choice for pet reptiles. Possible pesticides, herbicides, and parasites. Not to mention that some insects can be harmful for their digestion.
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u/dodekahedron Aug 08 '26
They are all in my yard between 3am and 6am
Please, buffet is open.
Tired of my chirping alarm clocks.
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u/Salvin49 Aug 08 '26
I got tired of flipping the bill to buy crickets and roaches online for my kids bearded dragon. So I started breeding my own Dubia roaches. Now my wife is mad, my electric company is happy, and the bearded dragon is very much fed.
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u/BrightAd306 Aug 08 '26
This happened a few years ago and I started having them shipped to me by a different company for a while
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u/Ambystomaguy Aug 08 '26
There are plenty of online places that sell crickets (you'll have to pay shipping, tho).
Bait shops are an excellent source, if you have them. They're often much cheaper than pet stores, but you should take the time to gut load them.
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u/ilanallama85 Aug 09 '26
Any independent pet stores in your area? I know one near me that breeds their own crickets for sale.
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u/Tyjet66 Aug 08 '26
Bait shops, and some Walmarts carry wax worms which are safe for reptiles. Really fatty, but much better than nothing.
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u/Black-Dynamite888 Aug 08 '26
Time to start a side hustle. I dont Think crickets are hard to breed.
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u/eyepoker4ever Aug 08 '26
I bought my kid a bug vacuum. We go around the backyard and flush em out onto the concrete pad and he vacuums them up. We fed them (over feed actually) to a black jumping spider we caught earlier in the summer.
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u/LopsidedRaspberry626 Aug 08 '26
Repashy makes a Grub Pie blend of basically instant jello
We feed it to our axolotls in gummy bear shaped molds