For a little while now, I’ve been having some difficulty with the nymph stage of my crickets in some of the habitats. All of the habitats (bins) were set up the same with a mudpie inside to provide a place for drinking water and for adult females to lay eggs. In some of the bins, the nymphs (baby crickets) would all collect together in a pile and die. All at a similar stage of growth. As it turns out, they were dehydrating. What I find most interesting is it was only happening in a few of the bins, but just enough to ruin my production plans. After a few emails with my cricket friends at Bitwater Farms, we determined they were dehydrating and I needed to find a way to provide moisture to them because not all of them can jump back into the mudpie to get hydrated. I have a lot of capillary mat left over from some wall garden projects and decided to give that a try. I cut pieces about 6”x12” and rolled them up so that the material would hold the moisture longer and the nymphs can crawl around inside the roll. So far, so good. Since I’ve added the moistened capillary mat everybody is alive and jumping. I’m absolutely thrilled because my production volume is going to increase exponentially. Now I can concentrate on growing the herd and dehydrating them only after harvest instead of accidentally doing it at the nymph stage!