Dubia roaches breed or buy?

[David Johnson]

Looking for info, personal experiences ECT. On to breed or buy Dubia roaches, success and failure's, pro's and cons. I have crunched numbers and seems breeding them is a lot cheeper but also seeing some human health issues that can be an issue, any info appreciated.

 

[Janelle]

Breeding your own is definitely cheaper. However, my kids have severe asthma and allergies (as in epipens and hospital stays severe), and as roaches can be a major allergen, we have decided that raising them would not be a good option for us.

 

[BeardedHippy]

while breeding your own will be a lot cheaper, it depends on the size of your dragon as to if it's practical or not. A juvenile dragon will eat a lot of small dubias but will be unable to eat the larger ones, meaning you will have a lot of adult dubias that you cant use. When you thin out a colony these adults would normally have to be euthenized if you dont have another critter that can eat them. As your dragon gets older it will eat far fewer although larger dubias and you may end up with more than you can use.
If you can afford to buy them I would do that unless you have more than 1 beardie or other reptile pets that can eat the excess ,otherwise it can be quite wasteful. That being said, you can slow the rate at which they breed and grow by altering the temperature and many people on this site have had great success breeding their own, saving temselves a small fortune in the process.

 

[KrissyLeigh]

^^^agreed. For a baby beardie or multiple animals a colony is great, but probably not worth it for one or two adult dragons. I started mine when my beardie was a baby and eating upwards of 30 roaches a day... now I have an excess of roaches, but I feed them to my other reptiles so fine.

The roaches really are hardly any work and they can take a lot of neglect, so that is good. I never had any health problems and I do have some crazy seasonal allergies. I do take my bin outside if I have to do major work, but mostly its fine in our house.

If you do decide to breed you can ask us specific questions, there are a lot of us that breed them. The biggest piece of advice I have is to get your heating set up so it DOESN'T melt a hole in your bin and allow your colony to escape, only to be found at 6 am the next morning when you stumble out of your bedroom to see a horde of escaped roaches coming for you.