I've tried raising crickets to feed our bearded dragon. It's damn hard. As easy as it is to find them under leaves etc. in the garden I was never able to maintain a breeding colony. And they smell pretty bad too.
I imagine there will eventually be a market for units that click together to create insect farms. Heating, lighting, food and water, with different shelves for different bugs.
I haven't seen anyone talking about the killing process. Do you just throw them into a deep fryer and hope for the best? Gas them?
I have a strong aversion to the idea of eating insects. I don't know how serious my hunger would have to be to overcome this. And that's for already dead and cooked insects. Give me a cage of wriggling moving bugs and I would have a really hard time killing cooking and eating them.
(I don't eat shrimps or prawns or lobster or similar for this same reason).
There were guys on Shark Tank with this idea for crickets. They had it all figured out. I can't find the exact episode on YouTube now, but here's the story:
They said: "when they're culled we lower the temperature so that there's no violent death or change in state (because insects are exothermic their metabolism slows until they go into a coma-like sleep without any pain)."
Not sure how they determine the pain thing, but that's apparently how it works.
