In late January of last year, I started with one bin of crickets with the hope that they would help contribute to the Fish Food Project closing the loop for our aquaponics system. They were put next to the soldier flies in the insectary greenhouse. It became apparent that they were not getting the ideal environment and I moved them indoors to a 10×10’ indoor gardening tent. Greenhouses are good for algae, plants, and soldier flies because they need sunlight, but too dynamic of an environment to encourage predictable cricket breeding. Hot days and cold nights are rough on the little ones.

As time went by, I started to learn their growth cycle and developed a way to harvest. It was fun to go through the process and once I got it down, it was time to stop harvesting and build the colony. It takes 8.2 ounces of cricket to make a pound of fish food. Cricket is 60% protein and the fish need a 32% protein fish food. Now, almost a year later, there are 55 bins in the tent and regular harvests are needed just to get more room to raise more crickets. It’s really tight in there! I even have to move a couple columns of bins out of the tent just to work and move around.

Well, the crickets are going gangbusters and harvests are finally regular. My initial harvests averaged a pitiful 2 ounces per bin, but as I got the hydration process down, the harvest numbers really jumped. Going from 2 ounces to now almost 9 ounces on average. Heck, one bin had almost a whole pound! I’ve only been harvesting now for a couple weeks so I expect to refine the process and get a predictable production schedule together. Then, it’s time to move on to the next stages of exploring alternative feeds for the crickets and improving their nutrition so they can help feed all of the fish and fowl on the property. Alternative feeds for alternative feeds!

It’s only been a couple of weeks since I’ve been doing the regular harvests. Here are the numbers so far: