the ones that get to big i leave alone so they can mature into adults so you can have more babies, how big is ur beardie? Around the 8th month mark my beardie was eating adult sized roaches with no problem, there really isnt a way to keep them small, unless you keep the bin for them cold(but thats not good for the female roaches)
My Beardie is still pretty young and In the next few months he should definitely be able to eat the bigs ones. And that’s a good idea, hopefully if they mature It will be easier for them to breed. Thank you!
Kill them. Kill them immediately with fire before they grow too big and overthrow you! No successful Dubia colony has any adults or large roaches. Breed just a tub full of babies because as we all know, adult roaches give birth to adult roaches and babies give birth to babies.
It would never be wise to feed the biggest ones to a bearded dragon because the most massive ones are always female and 1. you need them to breed; losing one is like losing hundreds of babies and 2. they're pretty big and hard even for an adult beardie and always feeding that size with the semi-armor of the adult females you are running the risk of impaction. If it happens once or twice accidentally like it did to another member, it's ok but always feeding the biggest females to your beardie is risky to its health and will definitely destroy your colony.
Being mature is the only way they can breed. Are you under some misconception that juvenile roaches can breed but less efficiently than adults? They're not like mammals/humans.
Ok to start thank you so much for the help! And yes I do understand it was quite the stupid question but I've never bred bugs before haha. One last question though. I have found dubia roach colony kits online, are those reliable or should be buying each kund of dubia separtely?
They're reliable but they're slow. It'll take you 12-18 months before they are stable enough to feed from. You should be looking on your local Craisglist to see if you can get whole colonies, equipment and all from people who want to dump them because they're exiting the reptile hobby. I got my colony for $40 from a local guy who wanted to get rid of them, bin and all with basically over 200 adult/subadult females in it and way enough males. I immediately took out all the extra males leaving a 1:4 ratio and them sold 90 females and some of those extra males (as breeder starter packs) for $140 the next day. Craigslist post literally sold out in one day. I have 1 adult beardie and I plan to feed him 1 subadult male roach per day so I don't need such a large colony. So in essence, I got an appropriately-sized colony for -$100. That's the best case scenario. If that's not happening, find guys selling established colonies for more reasonable prices rather than dumping prices. For example I have a guy now in my local area selling a colony with ~400 adults (males and females counted in estimate) that are currently producing babies in a 50 gallon tote but he wants $150. That's not a killer price but that's way better than what you can get online via colony kits especially because you can start feeding from it now rather than a year from now. If you also have only 1 beardie, then you can sell starter breeder packs out of it (something like 4 males, 16 females for $25) and get your money back. If you can't find either, then I'd wait or I'd search in the closest large city on Craigslist. Waiting a few weeks or 2 months or driving a few hours to save a year's worth of cultivation is a good deal as far as I'm concerned.
that sounds like a great deal! and your right I should get an established colony, quicker time. Thanks for the tip!
