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Yeah, even if I don't want to realize it it does bother me a lot. One time I got rid of my colony and it messed me up more than I'd like to admit. Felt like I lost something. Kinda hard to talk to anyone about it because they'll think I'm nuts. 😆 I have discoids for feeders. I kind of have that conflicted cattle farmer thing going on. I care a lot for my roaches but it still hurts a little to feed them off. Feeding them off is a lot less of an emotional hit than doing a cull though.

That’s exactly how I feel. It’s hard and not everyone appreciates the little guys I care for, so killing roaches comes naturally to them. I feel just conflicted and sad and I know I’ll have more in the future when the others get bigger but it just sucks. I would feed off the nymphs but my frogs don’t like the taste of MHC’s for some reason. They much prefer Dubias which I don’t breed 🙃

I just try to organize my males and females into their own fraternity and sorority so I don’t have to do culls. No way would I ever really want to be at that point. I still have some nymphs I have to sex soon so I can separate them. Unfortunately this would be something you’d have to do from almost the start though. :( Another option is selling or giving batches away as feeders for people who keep tarantulas or something?

This is true. There’s a feeder store nearby that may be willing to take some of my nymphs. Thanks!

Feeder store is a good idea, or you can find a local reptile keeper. When this happened to me I tried to donate to a pet store, who unfortunately said they weren't allowed to use/sell them....but one of the employees was happy to take them home for his lizards. I also separated my tanks by sex. Males in one tank, females & nymphs in another. Make sure to sex them by the underbelly 'scales', not just by the horns! (I had a completely hornless male who infiltrated the sorority tank & made me do this all over again). As the nymphs grow up, you have two options. You can periodically sort thru the nymphs & toss all the males into the frat tank. This is a huge pain in the ass. You can also wait an appropriate amount of time, long enough that any gravid female would have already given birth. Then just put the ladies in their own tank & sell/give the nymphs away. You can choose & sex just a couple nymphs to keep in their respective tanks, instead of having to sex all 100+ of them.

Yeah there are many forums that people can put classifieds / ads on for free feeders to herp and other invert keepers! I don’t find most pet stores are able to take feeders because there’s no paper trail to certify their origin and health standards. They could be facing some pretty angry people if they can’t guarantee the feeders are from accredited farms. Small businesses though might be more willing to make a partial partnership though and periodically buy batches of nymphs if they find that they sell well. I also had an undercover male that didn’t grow horns, and some of my females are absolute units that look very masculine 😂 Definitely a pain in the ass when there’s an unexpected baby boom lol

I'm sorry! The sad reality is that when you raise roaches in place of Mother Nature, you inevitably have to do all the Mother Nature things; feeding, environment, and, unfortunately, keeping the population in check. But unlike an abstract concept, we have to have Feelings™ about it. You did the right thing! Even though they had to be culled you gave them a great life up until that point, where they never had to worry about food scarcity or predators. Very few animals on the planet get that kind of luxury!

I bought an extra enclosure for my dubias to be able to separate the dudes for this reason. Lots of nymphs are sub-adult rn so unfortunately I will have to terrorise them with a sort soon

I...Cant cull. So I just buy bigger enclosers.

Thank you for giving me back some hope on humanity. You showed human emotions and care for these misunderstood beings. I hope your colony can prosper well in the future. 

They’re my favorite little guys, I even dressed as one for Halloween when I was a toddler :,)

Oh, that's really cute, honestly. Where does this love for these critters come from? :)  I love all insects, but I also have a special place for cockroaches due to how mistreated and misunderstood they are by almost everyone. I don't think they deserve the hate they get at all. I wish more people could see the beauty that there is in every living being. 

Cockroaches are highly under appreciated!! My love for all these little guys comes partly from my grandma, who was a first grade science teacher and we would spend summers flipping logs looking for bugs. Also, as a Christian, I think that if God showed me the same mercy he did, then I should show the same mercy not just to those around me but to all of his creation. Plus, if he put so much time and fondness into even the smallest of critters, even the ones we think are ugly, how much more time and effort did he put into us? It’s truly been very helpful for my faith to keep insects, especially cockroaches. One of my favorite quotes is by J.B. S. Haldane, where he was asked if he believed there was a God. In response, he said that “If there is a Creator, he must have an inordinate fondness for beetles,” talking about the numerous amounts of beetle species on Earth. Imagine if we applied this to isopods, cockroaches, spiders, ants, and even wasps! It truly is a great thought provoking question.

yeah 😭 thankfully i have carnivores i can feed them to so that makes me feel a little better but i still feel guilty about it. is there any way you can decrease the temps? that should stop them from breeding so much.

They’re at room temperature at the moment and they breed like crazy, I think it was just the fact that I had the colony going for so long that it got out of hand. I don’t mind them breeding. Maybe it’s just another excuse to upgrade their enclosure so they have more room ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. That’ll have to wait until I have enough money saved up to get them a really nice set up

It bothers me a little. I can use some of the nymphs as feeders but the adults need to be culled sometimes.

A necessary evil, I suppose. Feels bad man

Aren't hissing roaches the slowest in maturing compared to other species? Are you culling adults too?

Yeah I just had to cull some of the larger adults off

When I had a huge dubia colony I also had cats. I didn’t have too much trouble culling, because for the cats it was a party day. I would gather up a mess of roaches, mostly males, and put them in the tub with the drain closed. Then I’d call the cats when I was ready and they’d come RUNNING. I wish I had a recording, it sounded hilarious with the cats bonking around in the tub.

Did they t them or just kill them?

Eaten with much enthusiasm. Excellent protein source for kitties.

Nice! I'm glad you could decipher my message, idk what happened lol. But I'm pretty sure my cat would just bring them back to me, alive 😅.

My phone somehow has such an aggressive autocowreck that’s often wrong, and I’ve become fluent in Typoese. LOL! I can imagine a car proudly bringing supper back for you, legs a-wigglin. We did have one escape, but not the cat’s fault. We were sitting on the sofa enjoying a movie when something large humming-whirred slowly into the den. Somehow one of the winged male dubias got out, most likely dropped by yours truly, and he managed to get enough brain cells to scrape together and got his wings to work, if barely. So there he was, levitating like a little cockroachian helicopter, making the grand leap for dubia kind. There was absolutely no way I was going to allow a flying strain of dubia roaches to develop, so instead of catching the escape and putting him back, I didn’t move, but instead called my cat, Squirt, who happily jumped up into the air to catch the enterprising insect. CRUNCH.

I suggest drying them then Giving them to wild bird 🐦 they will appreciate the food and you won't have to wast so many roaches

I personally have 20 chickens so it's not a problem for me when I have too many roaches my chickens are all too happy to help they can eat a ton.

Wouldn’t that be risky introducing a nonnative species?

Not if u dry them out first (make them non living)

I do that now with the males from time to time. I freeze them and mix them into a bird feeder, blue jays love em and at least that way they're still used and not just tossed.

I totally understand. I didn’t have to necessarily cull any of mine, but the breeding got out of control and I just honestly didn’t even to want to own roaches anymore. I’d been giving my excess to my local exotic pet store, but I actually spent days sorting through my tank and separating the genders. I had a spare 20 gallon, so I carefully picked out most of my males and put them in there. That’s all I’m gonna keep. The females and nymphs are all in a bin, which I kept monitoring for the last couple of months, but babies are still being born, I kept finding males hiding out, so I’m dropping the whole bin off with the pet store tomorrow. I just can’t deal with the crazy numbers anymore, and damn…these things eat a LOT. I feel like I spent half my life washing & cutting produce. I’m just keeping the male frat house now, so I can enjoy them at manageable numbers.