Breeder Chronicles: January Update

Last month I wrote about the 1.3 group that I just received. Unfortunately it turned out to be a 0.4 group so I now have 8 females and 1 male which isn’t very helpful. My plans to create a Dreamsickle are on hold until I can find a Nova or Mack Snow RAPTOR male to match with the Mack Snow RAPTOR females. I am very disappointed because I really don’t want to spend the money that most people are asking for a single animal.

The Breeders

So in a few weeks I’m going to move forward with the Sunglow and Hypo pairings to at least get things started. Hopefully we’ll get a number of Sunglow RAPTORS with nice color. The Tremper Patternless and SHTCTB females will be used to fill the small local pet offers so I need to get started with those as well. I don’t usually sell animals to a reseller but I know the owners of the stores so I’m comfortable with  the care they will receive in addition to the coaching the owners will be given. I’m hoping to get between 15 and 25 dollars for each animal so it would be very helpful to the bottom line as well.

The Feeders

I recently had an issue with my Dubia colony. I found three male roaches outside of the tank and began to get a little paranoid about others that might have escaped. After a lot of research I’m pretty sure I know how they got out. I used hot glue to affix the ventilation screen to the top of the container that I kept them in. Since the males are able to flutter up a little I believe that they ate away at the glue a little and caused a corner of it to come unglued. From there the males were able to flutter up to the screen and walk out.

To avoid this issue I highly recommend using packing tape to secure your ventilation screens on the inside. The roaches cannot climb onto it so there is no chance they will chew on it and it keeps the screen protected so they can’t chew on that either. I have heard from some people that they will chew on the fiberglass screening and create a hole so I would use aluminum screen if you can.

Since it was males only I have no worries about any breeding happening especially with the temperature not being high enough. For anyone on the fence about using Dubia roaches I would say that it takes a lot of getting used to but I think that in the end it will be worth it. It is also kinda fun to know that you are “farming” your own feeders and you aren’t having to pay to feed your animals.

While I’m on the feeder topic I’ve set my mealworm colony up in a three drawer setup to increase the efficiency of the colony. The idea is that the top drawer is modified to have a screen bottom. Oats and beetles are placed in the top and and eggs or small mealworms that hatch fall through the screen and end up in the second drawer to grow. The bottom drawer is used to house the current feeding colony. It is very efficient and I can already see baby mealworms in the second drawer so it appears to be working quite well.

I have so much more to do to be ready to start breeding. I’m planning on building two incubators from old mini refrigerators but haven’t even gotten the fridges yet. I also plan on making a rack from another video that was posted on YouTube that starts with some plastic shelves and makes small modifications to create what looks like the perfect reptile rack. Since I’m out of space I am going to need at least 48 hatchling tubs to feel like I have enough to what could come. If anyone has some proven incubator plans, a Mack Snow male for sale or anything else they’d like to contribute just comment down below!