How to start a Discoid Roach Colony without a Breeder Kit - Part 2

In Part 1, we talked about something that might sound a little strange coming from a company that sells discoid roaches:

You don't actually need us to build your own colony.

You don't even need a Breeder Kit. A Breeder Kit certainly makes things faster because you're starting with known adult males and females, but if you have a healthy group of discoids and enough patience to let them grow, you've already got the beginnings of a colony.

So let's assume you took our advice. You put aside some of your roaches. You managed not to feed them to your reptile. You've been keeping them warm, fed and hydrated. And now... They're growing up.

Welcome to Part 2. This is where your container of future breeders actually starts becoming a colony.

Suddenly, there are wings everywhere

One of the easiest signs that your colony is reaching the next stage is pretty hard to miss.

Males start getting wings. Adult male discoids develop long, fully formed wings covering most of their abdomen, while adult females remain broader and don't develop those same long wings.

And sometimes it feels like every roach in the entire bin decided to become a male at the exact same time.

You lift an egg crate and think: "Ummm...where are all my girls?"

Don't panic yet. This is one of those moments where learning to manage a colony also means learning when not to manage it.

Yes, younger Discoids CAN be sexed

Before we go any further, we want to clarify something from Part 1.

You don't technically have to wait until adulthood to determine the sex of a discoid roach.

Younger discoids can be sexed by examining physical differences on the underside of the abdomen. It's just considerably easier for the average keeper once they reach adulthood because males basically announce themselves with a giant pair of wings.

When we say that we don't routinely sex our regular feeder roaches at Luna Roaches, we're not saying that they can't be sexed. We're saying that we intentionally don't do it.

Unless we're filling a Breeder Kit where we've specifically promised you a certain number of males and females, we're selecting your roaches according to the size and quantity you ordered.

Not their sex. We're not sitting here picking females out of feeder orders so customers can't eventually establish their own colonies. We've never believed in doing business that way.

If you buy regular discoids from us, decide to let a bunch grow up and eventually discover you've created your own breeding colony...

Good. That's exactly why we're writing this series.

Your ratio doesn't have to be perfect

Once adults start appearing, you're naturally going to start paying attention to how many males and females you have. Here's the first thing to remember:

You don't need a 50/50 ratio.

You actually don't need anywhere close to it. A male can mate with multiple females, so having considerably more females than males is perfectly fine for a breeding colony. If you have an excessive number of adult males, you can eventually begin using some of those males as feeders while keeping enough behind to maintain the colony.

But don't get too trigger-happy with the males just because you suddenly see a bunch of wings.

Give the colony a little time first. Because we've noticed something pretty interesting over the years...

Our bins seem to have a way of balancing themselves

This is one of those things we want to clearly label as our own observation, rather than something we're presenting as established discoid biology.

We've managed a LOT of discoid bins over the years and we've had some pretty wonky sex ratios.

We've had bins that suddenly looked extremely male-heavy. Then, as the next generations matured, we seemed to have females everywhere plus we've seen it go the other direction too. A bin will appear overwhelmingly female-heavy and then suddenly we're watching a whole bunch of males coming up behind them.

We've seen this happen enough times that Chris and I have pretty much stopped worrying when the adult ratio temporarily looks ridiculous.

Our bins ultimately seem to move back toward a workable balance.

Now, does that mean female discoids somehow know there are too many males around and intentionally start producing more daughters? We can't tell you that. We haven't seen scientific evidence demonstrating that discoid females actively change the sex of their offspring based on the colony's existing sex ratio.

And there are plenty of other possible explanations for what we're observing. Males and females don't necessarily mature at exactly the same rate. They don't necessarily have identical lifespans or mortality rates. And the adults you're looking at today don't necessarily represent the actual sex ratio of all the younger roaches hiding underneath them.

So we're not claiming that discoids have some magical internal census department. We're simply telling you what we've repeatedly observed in our own colonies:

A weird sex ratio today doesn't necessarily mean you'll have a weird sex ratio three months from now.

Give the colony a chance before you decide something needs fixing. Sometimes the best colony management is leaving the darn roaches alone.

Those females are your production line

Once your females start reaching adulthood, they become some of the most valuable animals in your developing colony. Yes, technically they're still feeder insects.

But don't feed them... at least not yet. Think about what an adult reproductive female represents.

Feeding one adult female to your bearded dragon doesn't just remove one roach from the colony.

and you're potentially removing the future offspring she would have produced too. When you're trying to establish a colony, your adult females are essentially your production line. Protect them.

If you need feeders and your colony can support it, excess males are generally a much better place to start. Later, once your population becomes established, you'll have much more flexibility.

Right now, you're still building the machine.

And now you wait...again

You finally have adult males... you have adult females... Excellent!

Tomorrow morning there should be 800 baby roaches running around, right?

Yeah... No.

This is the part of breeding discoids nobody can speed up for you because they need time to mate. Females need time to develop their offspring and you need to resist the overwhelming urge to lift every egg crate twelve times a day looking for babies.

Keep your husbandry stable, keep them warm, keep them fed, keep an appropriate source of hydration available and give them some peace. Eventually you'll lift an egg crate and see something tiny dart across the bottom of the bin.

Then you'll see another. And another. BABIES!

This is where things get really exciting. But it is also where people can accidentally stall a brand-new colony!

Those first babies aren't really feeders

We know... You started this colony because you wanted feeders. And technically those adorable little specks running around the bottom of your bin ARE feeders. But pretend they're not... at least for a while.

Those first generations are what will eventually turn your little starter colony into a population capable of producing enough roaches to actually feed your animals consistently, some of those babies need to grow into smalls, some of those smalls need to become mediums, some of those mediums need to become larges and some of those larges eventually need to become the next generation of breeding adults.

You're building layers:

Babies → growing nymphs → future breeders → breeding adults → more babies

Once you've got roaches continually moving through that cycle, you've got something much more valuable than a bin that simply happens to contain a lot of roaches, you've got a sustainable colony.

Don't eat your seed corn

There's an old farming expression that fits perfectly here:

Don't eat your seed corn.

Historically, farmers had to save part of their harvest as seed for the following year's crop. Eat everything now and you've got nothing to plant later (From our own Homestead Experience Year One, we can confirm this is true haha)

Your young discoid colony works the same way. Those first generations are your seed corn. If your colony produces 100 usable feeders and you immediately remove 100 feeders, you haven't really grown anything... You've simply converted your colony's future into today's dinner.

The hardest part about starting your own feeder colony is learning to harvest less than it produces. Especially in the beginning. Let that population snowball because there will be plenty of time for your dragon to reap the benefits later.

So when CAN you start feeding from it?

We wish there were a magic number.

"Congratulations! Roach number 1,001 has arrived. You may now begin feeding."

But... it doesn't really work that way.

Someone with one Leopard Gecko might reach sustainability with a relatively small colony. Someone feeding multiple adult Bearded Dragons is going to need significantly more production. Instead of obsessing over a specific number, look at what is happening inside the bin.

Are babies appearing regularly?

Do you have small, medium and large nymphs?

Do you have healthy breeding adults?

Are younger animals continually growing up behind those adults?

Can you remove the size your reptile needs without practically wiping that size out of the bin?

If the answer to those questions is yes, you're getting there.

The real question isn't: "How many roaches do I have?"

It's: "Is my colony replacing roaches faster than I'm removing them?"

That's what sustainability actually looks like.

Don't forget WHY you're raising them

Once people get into breeding insects, it's surprisingly easy to become obsessed with production.

How many babies? How quickly are they growing? How many feeders can I pull this week? How can I make the colony produce MORE?

But we want you to remember something.

The goal isn't actually to produce as many roaches as humanly possible. The goal is to produce quality food for your reptile.

That means what you feed your discoids matters, their environment matters, their hydration matters, their health matters. The roach isn't simply a delivery vehicle with legs and everything that goes into raising that feeder ultimately affects the quality of the animal you're offering your reptile.

That's why we're so particular about how we raise our discoids here at Luna Roaches. It's not a production assembly line. And if you're raising your own? We hope you'll be particular too.

One day you'll open the bin and realize it happened

There's not really a ceremony, no balloons fall from the ceiling, your roaches aren't going to present you with a certificate but one day you'll just look into the bin and realize something has changed.

There are adults.

There are subadults.

There are larges.

There are mediums.

There are smalls.

There are tiny babies disappearing into every little crevice.

You're feeding roaches to your reptile, but somehow there are still MORE roaches than there were before but you're no longer carefully protecting every single baby and you're no longer wondering whether your females are ever going to reproduce. The generations are overlapping and continually replacing one another.

You built a colony.

And if you started that colony from regular feeder roaches rather than a Breeder Kit? You did exactly what we told you was possible in Part 1.

We'd still rather teach you

We'll finish Part 2 with the same philosophy we started with in Part 1.

Yes, Luna Roaches sells discoid roaches, yes, this business supports our family and yes, if every single one of you builds a wildly successful Discoid Colony and never needs to buy another roach from us again, Chris and I might eventually have to have a slightly uncomfortable business meeting.

But we're still going to teach you because feeder availability can change. Shipping can get interrupted, money can get tight, life happens AND your reptiles still have to eat.

If knowing how to build and maintain your own discoid colony means that animal always has access to a nutritious feeder regardless of what is happening outside your home, then we think you should have that knowledge. We don't want your reptile eating Luna Roaches because we're the only option we've allowed you to have.

We want you choosing Luna Roaches because you trust how we raise them.

And if someday you don't need us anymore because your own colony is thriving?

We'll be over here quietly taking a little credit.

After all...

We taught you how to grow the darn things. 😉

Mel & Chris

Luna Roaches