Here are the costs for cricket production. Full spreadsheet after the page break. It costs $7.21 to produce one pound of cricket in the system that I use. The system includes a bin, two mudpies made from 5 parts coconut coir and one part worm castings. Each bin gets up to 6 egg crates as they grow to provide a place to hide out and do cricket-like things. At peak production, I had 55 bins, but moved down to 40 bins so I could keep some sanity. I was starting to hear crickets 24/7. And it wasn’t because of my bad jokes. <chirp chirp chirp>…Hey wait a minute!

I’ve played around with supplementing their feed, but in the end I came to the conclusion that to make this project work predictably, using organic non GMO peanut based chicken feed crumbles was the best option to figure out the production side of things. I hope to someday be able to back out the chicken feed crumbles for something we can grow on site like spirulina and aquaponics vegetables. They really like that stuff! I also think there is a lot of promise with fermented feed as I experimented with last winter.

For the feed, I pay $21 per 50lb bag of organic peanut based chicken crumbles. That’s $0.000925/ gram. The first week when they are tiny they get a cupful and that lasts about a week. Then I add another as they get bigger and that lasts a week. I check twice a week and, if need be, I add. By week three they are eating more and I am able to feed twice a week.

Each bin uses a total of up to 6 egg cartons at $0.16 each.

Each bin has two “mud pies” from coco coir and worm castings. We have worms to make our own castings. As mentioned above, the ratio is one part castings to 5 parts coco coir. The retail cost for both is about the same when considering proportions used. Each mud pie has 22 ounces of “mud” for laying eggs and for drinking water at a cost of $0.11 per bin. I believe the castings are a very important component as they add microbe meals for the babies to get a good start.

Electrical costs are $0.15 per KWh which means about $84/ month in heat. This is where your mileage may vary the most. This cost can be reduced if I insulate the cricket castle a little better as it really is just an indoor grow tent in an uninsulated garage.

For labor, I went with the California minimum wage of $10/hour to do the weekly chores of adding water, vacuuming out frass(cricket poop), and adding feed as it does not require much skill. There is some decision making involved, but it isn’t too incredibly hard.

There are certainly better systems out there. This one is pretty low labor, which is why it evolved this way. Given unlimited time and resources, I would design it a little differently doing away with the bins entirely and going with high walled perforated metal table tops and adding an automated drip water system. There would be collection trays under the tables that you can pull out like a drawer to clean the frass. I’ve had so many escapees in the tent that I’ve learned the bins are almost unnecessary. The crickets all inevitably end up hiding in the stack of new egg crates that I keep in the tent. I think you can have a more controlled environment by getting rid of the bins, since currently, with the bins you have 40 different microclimates to manage instead of one big one. I also think this could be done in a hoop house, too, with the right modifications. I’ll get back to you on that one. 😉