Today, when I was installing Ubuntu in a virtual machine for use with the free VMware Player, I checked on the baby field crickets. Yesterday the first 3 were born, and today? A true baby cricket explosion. I guess I saw over 50 of the very small critters, also known as "pinheads". When I had a second peek, at least 10 jumped out of the small Ferrero Rocher box.
With help from Esme I was able to recapture 6 of them. Then I asked Esme if she could buy a bigger plastic box so I could let the crickets jump into that one.
She returned with a smaller version (15.55 liters) of the RubberMaid box we already use for the previous batch of baby crickets, which are bigger compared to the newborns. The box has, like the bigger one, a so called "clever latch". I am not sure if it's called clever because most of the time it doesn't work.
However, what I like about this box (and the bigger one) is that they have 4 dents in the bottom, which are intended as feet at the underside. Somehow the crickets seem to drop into those dents, so in order to give them an ability to get out easily, I put little balls made out of pieces of a paper napkin in the dents. Somehow the crickets prefer to use those dents like litter boxes, which suits me fine since it makes cleaning easier.
The parents of those little baby crickets got captured about 3 weeks ago. Yesterday I captured a few adult field crickets, and today I added a little box with sand to the box I keep them in, for the next batch of cricket eggs.