has anyone any experience of breeding locusts please? if so, any advise gratefully received!

only experience I had was my brother did it. I remember the nights when my brothers thought it was funny to put dead locust on my bed just before I went to bed :( :(
Remember he bred meal worms to feed them, but ?I may be wrong.
Goodluck.

Not personally but I know they need something suitable to lay their eggs in - the breeding cages at my old school had little tubes at the front, with the tops at substrate level.  They were filled with damp cotton wool so the locusts could poke their ovipositors (egg-laying thingies!) into the wool to lay their eggs.  Not sure how you could do that in a non-specialised cage, I suppose quite deep sustrate with little plastic tubes?  The ones at school were about 5" deep though.

The ones at college had egg boxes to lay their eggs in, cant remember much else though - sorry.

are these for your lizards Sam? I was thinking of breeding my own mice for my snake, the shops are so expensive.  I just dont think I could kill them :(

Better to kill them than to feed them alive as some people do with some snakes. I can't bear that as the animals have no chance, just sit there until they are taken and have probably a slow death.

I had mice as pets and can't bear the idea of anyone using them as food  ...:(

Sorry to come across as negative but I have to be honest!

Lindsay
x

With you on that one Lindsay - and of course it's illegal to feed live mammals to herps.  Obviously that doesn't stop some people though - I had a guy ask if we could get harvest mice when I was working in PAH, he wanted to breed them to get babies small enough to feed to his baby snakes - and he planned to feed them live.  Yik.

My snake wouldnt know what to do with a live mouse - it would probably do more damage to him than he would to it.

The only time I would say to live feed (although it is illegal) is when I was at college we had some snakes bought in that were confiscated at customs, they were wild and didnt know how to eat dead things so we had to force feed them which was totally unfair.

I used to breed rats and had to be careful which homes they went to as they were cheaper to buy than frozen ones

its quite complicated, if you search the net  you will find lots of info.
in the mean time, here is the basic info.

If you are wanting to breed your own locust then all that's needed is a 4 inch deep dish filled with silver sand or sharp sand. The sand should be kept moist by wetting it and adding a few drops of water each day, you don't want the sand wet though, just moist.

The female locust will position herself over the sand dish and push her back end in to it to deposit up to 200 eggs. Keep your tank at the correct temperature 20-26 c in a dry atmosphere, if fertilisation has taken place.  the young  locusts will emerge after 10 - 12 days.

The young can be fed on the same material as the adults and will go through several (5) instar moultings before becoming adult - you'll probably have used them by this time though!
hope this helps.

p.s. @ lindsay totally agree with you there,but i have only killed 1 day old pinks in freezer :-(
wasn't nice though :-(

Donna 

I don't think I'd be any good at keeping snakes, etc :P

Nikita, I didn't realise it was actually illegal to feed live animals but I guess yes, it would be...

I remember a friend once told me about his friend, who used to feed live things to his spider ... it was horrible!

Lindsay
x

  well i feed live crickets, locusts, caterpillers, in fact anything that stays still long enough for me to catch in my net!!!  I have never heard of it being illegal before The world has gone quite mad

thanks for locust info, funily enough I found that same care sheet on net last night and my locust now have warm sand pit to play in

It's illegal to feed live MAMMALS - so locusts, crickets, mealworms, wax worms, etc are ok.

Debs

ahhhh, mammals not ANIMALS....although still seems a bit daft

Well, its illegal to feed live vertebrates not just mammals - spare a thought for the other animal groups ;)
One other point to bear in mind when breeding your own inverts to use as food is the food you give them!  A good varied diet to include quality veg and bran for the locusts (crickets will also tuck into lots of fruit) will provide a good healthy foundation for the animal they are intended for.
Sarah.