How to start a discoid roach colony without a breeder kit - Part 1

When people decide they want to start breeding their own discoid roaches, one of the first things they usually look for is a breeder kit. Adult females. Adult males. Maybe some assorted nymphs thrown in to give the colony a head start. And yes, that's certainly the fastest way to do it.

But here's something that gets overlooked:

You don't actually need a breeder kit to start a discoid colony.

And we think that's important for people to know. In fact, it's one of the reasons we created the Luna Roaches Breeder Kits in the first place.

Why would a roach business teach you how to grow your own roaches?

We've actually thought about that question quite a bit. From a strictly business standpoint, teaching customers how to produce their own feeders probably sounds a little counterproductive.

After all, if you can grow your own discoids, why would you need to keep buying them from us?

But Luna Roaches was never supposed to be about gatekeeping information so that people would be forced to depend on us. We created our Breeder Kits because we wanted people to have another option.

If money gets tight, feeder insects become difficult to find, shipping gets disrupted, or life simply throws something unexpected at you, we want you to know that there's a way to maintain a dependable food source for the animals that depend on you. More importantly, we want you to know how to do it properly.

For us, this has always been first and foremost about making sure your reptile has access to quality feeder insects. If those insects come from our bins, fantastic. We're incredibly grateful every time someone chooses Luna Roaches. But if they eventually come from a healthy colony sitting in your own home because we helped teach you how to build one?

We're pretty proud of that too.

We would much rather give you the information and let you decide what's right for your animals than withhold knowledge because it might mean selling a few more roaches.

So let's talk about how to do it.

First, understand what a breeder kit actually does

There's nothing biologically special about the roaches in a breeder kit. They're simply roaches that have already reached breeding age and have been selected by sex. When you buy a breeder kit, what you're really buying is time and certainty.

Instead of waiting for nymphs to mature and seeing what your eventual male-to-female ratio looks like, you're starting with adults that we've already selected for you. That's convenient, especially if your goal is to get a colony producing as soon as possible. But if breeder kits aren't available, or you simply don't want to spend the extra money for adult breeders, you can accomplish the same thing by raising younger discoids yourself.

You're just starting the clock a little earlier.

Start with more roaches than you think you'll need

If your goal is to create a breeding colony from assorted discoids, don't start with six roaches and cross your fingers. When you're starting with younger discoids, your group is going to contain some combination of males and females, and you won't know exactly what that ratio looks like until they get closer to maturity.

That's why numbers matter.

Starting with 50 to 100 assorted discoids gives you a much better foundation than trying to build a colony from a handful of feeders. You don't necessarily need the largest roaches available, either.

Medium and large nymphs can actually be a great place to start because you're allowing those animals to mature under the exact conditions they'll eventually breed in.

A quick note about sexing our roaches

This is also a good place to explain something about how we handle roaches here at Luna Roaches.

We don’t routinely sex the roaches we sell. Intentionally manipulating an order to prevent someone from establishing their own colony has never sat right with us. Frankly, we think that’s a pretty crappy way to do business.

The exception is when we're offering a product, such as one of our Breeder Kits, where we've specifically promised a certain number of males and females. In that situation, of course, we sex the roaches because we're obligated to provide exactly what the product description says you're receiving. Outside of those situations, we aren't going through our bins and separating males from females before filling regular orders.

That means when you purchase assorted discoids from us, they're exactly that: assorted.

We're not intentionally pulling females out and leaving you with males, and we're not manipulating the sex ratio of ordinary feeder orders. Roaches are selected according to the size and quantity ordered, not according to sex. That distinction becomes important if you're planning to turn a regular order into a breeding colony.

An assorted group should be treated as a starting population, not as a guaranteed breeder ratio. The larger the group you allow to mature, the better your chances of ending up with enough males and females to establish the colony you want.

Once they mature, you can do the selecting.

Stop feeding off your future breeders

This sounds ridiculously obvious, but it's probably the easiest mistake to make.

You buy 100 discoids.

They start getting bigger.

Your bearded dragon or Gecko looks hungry.

And suddenly your future breeding colony has become lunch.

If you're serious about establishing a colony, designate a group of roaches as off limits.

Those are no longer feeders. Those are livestock. Let them grow. As they mature, you'll begin seeing the adult characteristics that allow you to identify males and females. That's when you can start managing the colony more intentionally.

Don't panic when you see lots of males

One of the things we hear from people starting colonies is concern about sex ratios. You do want multiple males in a breeding colony, but you don't need anywhere near as many males as females. The good news is that you don't have to get the ratio perfect from day one.

Let your roaches mature first.

Once you can confidently identify your adults, you can begin selecting which animals remain in the breeder population. If you end up with more males than you need, those extra males can become feeders while your females remain protected. That's one of the advantages of building a colony this way.

The colony gradually sorts itself out as the animals mature.

Your first adult females are valuable

Once females begin reaching adulthood, resist the temptation to feed them off. Those females are the foundation of your colony. A healthy adult female can produce multiple broods during her lifetime, so removing one adult female doesn't just remove one roach. You're potentially removing dozens of future offspring. This is where colony management starts becoming different from simply keeping feeders alive.

You're no longer asking:

"Which roach should I feed today?"

You're asking:

"Which roaches will produce the feeders I'll need three months from now?"

That's a completely different mindset.

Give them conditions worth reproducing in

Keeping discoids alive and getting discoids to reproduce efficiently aren't exactly the same thing.

A feeder holding bin can tolerate a wider range of conditions because you're simply keeping the insects healthy until they're fed.

A breeding colony benefits from stability. You want appropriate warmth, access to moisture, good ventilation, plenty of hiding surface, consistent nutrition, and enough space for the colony to establish itself without constantly being disturbed.

And don't underestimate the importance of time. If you're constantly dumping the bin, scrubbing everything down, rearranging their hides, and disturbing the colony, you're repeatedly changing the environment they're trying to settle into. Discoids like consistency.

A breeding bin doesn't need to look sterile to be healthy.

Feed the breeders like breeders

Once you've decided that certain roaches are your breeding stock, nutrition becomes even more important.

You're not just feeding an insect. You're supporting growth, reproduction, pregnancy, and eventually the production of healthy nymphs. Offer a nutritionally balanced dry diet along with appropriate sources of hydration and fresh foods. Variety matters. So does consistency.

A colony cannot build new roaches out of nutrients it doesn't have. And remember where all of those nutrients ultimately end up. In the animal eating the roach.

That's why we're so particular about feeder quality at Luna Roaches. Whether you're feeding insects raised by us or insects you've raised yourself, the goal should be the same: producing a healthy, well-nourished feeder for your reptile.

Then comes the hard part: waiting

This is the biggest difference between starting with a breeder kit and growing your own breeders.

You have to wait!

Your nymphs need to mature.

Your adults need to breed.

Females need time to produce their first broods.

And then, one day, you'll lift a piece of egg crate and see tiny little discoids running around underneath it.

Congratulations.

You built a breeding colony.

Those first babies are also where things start getting interesting because your colony now contains multiple generations. Adults are breeding. Large nymphs are approaching maturity. Medium nymphs are growing. Tiny nymphs are entering the system.

Instead of having a box of roaches, you're beginning to develop a self-renewing population.

Don't immediately feed all the babies

The first generation born in your colony shouldn't automatically become feeders. Some can be.

But remember what you're trying to build. If you allow part of each generation to mature, you're continually adding young breeding stock behind your original adults.

That's important because breeders don't live forever. A sustainable colony needs replacement generations coming up behind them.

Think of your colony as a pipeline:

Babies → Nymphs → Future breeders → Breeding adults → More babies

If you remove too many animals from one part of that pipeline, production eventually slows down.

Build the colony before you expect it to feed everything

This may be the single most important piece of advice we can give someone starting a colony without a breeder kit.

Don't harvest too aggressively in the beginning.

Your first goal isn't producing feeders. Your first goal is producing more roaches. Let the population build. Once you're seeing consistent reproduction and multiple generations in the bin, you can start harvesting more heavily while still protecting enough animals to maintain production. A mature colony can be surprisingly productive.

A young colony that's constantly being raided for feeders never gets the opportunity to become one.

Starting without a breeder kit can actually have an advantage

It takes longer, but there's something we really like about growing a colony this way.

You're raising those roaches in the environment where they'll eventually reproduce.

From nymph to adult, they're eating your food, living at your temperatures, experiencing your humidity levels, and growing inside your husbandry system. By the time they reach adulthood, your bin is already home. And you've had plenty of time to learn how the colony behaves before suddenly finding yourself responsible for a tub full of pregnant females and hundreds of babies. For someone new to breeding discoids, that's not necessarily a bad thing.

We'd rather teach you than make you depend on us

At the end of the day, Luna Roaches is obviously a business. This business supports our family, and every order placed with us matters. But we don't believe supporting our business and educating our customers have to be at odds with each other.

We're not interested in keeping the "secret" of breeding discoids behind a curtain because we're afraid you'll stop ordering from us. There really isn't a secret. There is biology, good husbandry, patience, and learning how to manage a colony.

We created our Breeder Kits to make that process easier and faster, not to make people believe they're the only way it can be done. If there ever comes a time when buying feeders every week isn't practical for your family, we'd rather know that you have a healthy colony at home and the knowledge to keep it going. Because ultimately, the animal we're all doing this for isn't the roach.

It's the reptile waiting on the other side of the enclosure.

Whether its next meal was raised in one of our Luna Roaches colonies or in the colony we helped you learn how to build, what matters most to us is that it's getting a healthy, nutritious, quality feeder insect.

That's the whole point.

The bottom line

Breeder Kits are convenient. They're fast. But they aren't the only way to build a discoid colony. If you can get your hands on a good group of healthy assorted discoids, you can absolutely grow your own breeding population.

• Start with enough animals.

• Protect your future females.

• Keep enough males for breeding.

• Provide stable conditions and good nutrition.

• Allow each generation to replace the one ahead of it.

And most importantly, give the colony time to become a colony before expecting it to become a feeder factory. Nature already knows how to make more roaches. Your job is mostly to give them the right conditions and then try not to eat your breeding stock.

Well...

Your reptile's job is to try to eat your breeding stock.

Your job is to stop them.

Mel & Chris

Luna Roaches