I am a 27 year old “cockroach farmer”. I own a company that produces millions of cockroaches per month for the pet food industry. Ask me anything!

I remember reading of a farm in China that was breeding them as a meat alternative. Do you see any future in something like that or you think you’ll stay focussed on pet food?

We will be staying focused on pet food, simply due to the fact that the species we breed is very time consuming and costly. I’m sure American cockroaches are much easier and quicker to produce on a mass scale, but that’s just nasty! 😆

Where are you based and how long does it take to breed a cockroach?

We are based in Wichita, Kansas. It takes about 5-7 months for them to reach adulthood and then 60 days for gestation.

See, stay the fuck outa kansas.

Cockroach tornado

Cocknado?

*roachnado

How do people react when you tell them what you do for a living?

They either laugh, ask me if I’m serious, or are very interested in learning more about it. I used to tell people I did something else for a living, but now I’m proud of it! Lol

Hello and thank you for doing this AMA. I am an ecologist and have bred roaches for research but certainly not at that scale! What is the most challenging issue you face dealing with millions of roaches? What does your setup look like?

There have been several challenges. At one point a couple years ago we had an infestation of German cockroaches. We moved to a completely different city because of it, and we implemented a lot of “pest control” procedures to make sure it never happened again. Having tens of millions of cockroaches actually attracts a lot of other pests, so I’d say that is probably our biggest challenge. Plus just figuring out how to maximize growth and production. We currently have 5 warehouses within about 10 minutes of each other to separate everything out (100,000 sqft total), and within each building we actually setup multiple 1,000sqft airtight rooms. Within those rooms we have racks with 2’x1’x1.5’ tubs that the “colonies” are kept in. It’s a lot of work!

Please post the locations of your warehouses so I can make sure NEVER TO LIVE NEAR THERE.

We are away from homes. And there is little to no chance of them getting out of the rooms, let alone the building. Even if they made it past our rooms into the building, then outside our building we use a natural pesticide outside that will make sure they don’t make it very far.

That's cool. Is that something you do just as a courtesy to the community or are you required by some kind of local law to make sure your cockroaches don't become an invasive species?

There aren’t any laws against it, we just do it as a courtesy and because we would rather not have people “snooping”. You’d be surprised how many people come around asking what we do. I don’t mind telling people, but all it takes is one ignorant person to ruin it for us. People simply don’t understand that these aren’t your average “pest” cockroach. In fact, there are over 4,500 species of cockroaches and only 30 are considered pests.

I hear you. I worked with German cockroaches for my MS and never again. They are escape artists and get into everything.

Are your roaches separated by species in each warehouse? The logistics of this are really interesting.

Right now we only keep dubia roaches and hissing roaches, so we have one room for the hissing roaches and the rest are spread throughout each facility.

Glad you're using two very easy to handle species. I gave a workshop at my university last year to Middle School girls interested in STEM. It was about insect behavior and we used Madagascar hissing cockroaches. I couldn't have asked for a more docile species. They were great and everyone had a good time.

Do you have a preference for either? Which do you prefer breeding given any difficulties that may arise per species?

So hissing roaches actually don’t make very good pet food due to their hard shells, we really only keep them because they are well-known and we sell them in our pet store as starter pets for kids and to local teachers for classroom pets.

Oh god do the hissing ones make a bunch of noise when you disturb them?

Just a quiet hissing sound. Sometimes it’s louder, but normally it’s pretty quiet!

I have my own colony of Chocolate Roaches for feeding to my Spiders and Scorps, I have had the colony for over a year now and its going very strong. I keep them in a big tub with coco fibre substrate and some heat as its not the warmest here. I feed them on a mix of cat food and veg.

My questions are should I be introducing new stock every now an again or is it okay that they interbreed so much and the other is I sometimes go through periods where they seem to lose legs, some will go down to just two legs, do they do this to each other? The only other insects in there are some woodlice and spring tails to keep it clean.

I don’t think adding new “blood” would hurt anything. Genetics are important! Regarding the legs, they may be competing for food, water, or even breeding, so they are probably chewing each other up...

Facility

Uhh, how did you get involved with it? I mean is it a wide practice already and you founded just another brand or are you the Elon Musk of cockroach paste?

So I actually grew up with reptiles. I got my first bearded dragon when I was 7 and when I was 11 a neighbor moved in across the street who I found out actually bred bearded dragons for people who wanted “designer” morphs at the time. I ended up saving some money and bought them from him when he got out of it. I bred bearded dragons until I was about 16/17 and during that time I bought a TON of crickets. I heard about people feeding cockroaches as an alternative so I started buying a bunch of them (at this time they were almost $1 each). I ended up selling my bearded dragons and the roaches. I dropped out of high school at 16 to get a full time internship at an ad agency and I started doing web design, dev, and internet marketing and while working there I started to see trends of people buying those roaches so I bought a bunch of them again. I bought a few websites and started selling them online. The first two years I spent about $50,000 on Facebook ads and started growing the market for them as an alternative to crickets. It just took off. Over the next few years I spent hundreds of thousands on fb ads and did reptile and exotic pet expos to get the brand out. I think what really drove me to do it was the fact that a lot of the places I bought crickets and other insects from over the years had other pests in with them like spiders. I was terrified of them. On top of that I wasn’t a fan of crickets and for some reason the roaches just became this thing I felt like could be big! It has paid off! But there were many times I was close to giving up or going bankrupt. It’s been a rough several years.

So you are basically a pioneer who figured out a way to monetize their interest. Wow, I am really inspired because normally I have a very dark vision of the future and you, a peer of mine did it.

Thanks! It wasn’t an easy path, it took me 4 years of 80+ hour weeks to make the same money I was making before. I couldn’t tell you how many times I heard from friends and family that I needed to go back to school or go get a degree. It’s crazy how we think there’s only one way to achieve success. I started an exotic pet store a couple years ago as well, and next I’ll be opening a “reptile zoo” where people can come see our alligators, large snakes, monitor lizards, etc. I hope it works out, but even if it doesn’t I’ll keep it open because I think education like that is important for kids. We need more stuff like this to keep kids from being on their “screens” all day.

Every older friend of mine talks about a critical point in their carreer where things became exponentially easier than were before. Did you experience it as well?

I don’t know that I’ve reached that point. I’d say things are definitely easier than they used to be now that we are more consistent and financially stable, but it’s a very risky business to be in considering that we are dealing with live insects. There are new challenges every week, and just when I think we solved one of the problems we had in the past it comes back. To be completely honest, money has solved a lot. I hate to sound like that, but there is a lot more stress when you see problems that cost money and you don’t have it so you spend a lot more time that wouldn’t have been necessary.

Without the details of the structure of your awesome business, may I make a recommendation? (Apologies if you have this already in place). Form an S Corp and begin building commercial credit. It is actually easy to procure, but takes time because it is sequential and additive. After the entry level credit from Q Quill, for example, you can get $10k Visa and MasterCard lines of credit. And it is not tied to your personal credit score. Better than maxing your personal credit cards or borrowing from family. I think you may be beyond that, but adding for other viewers...

We actually just filed as an S Corp this past year, but filed as an LLC starting in 2014 (when I first started this business). I did have to start by using personal credit cards, but over the years I was able to move over to business credit. It was tough at the beginning because I couldn’t get enough credit because I was only 20 at the time. I ended up filling out a ton of credit card apps and maxed them all out for a couple years while I built my business. My credit score went from an 800 down to low 600s, but it’s back above 800 as of this year and I bought my first house! So it all worked out in the end! It could have gone a lot differently...

You are paying so much attention to detail, long answers, this is GREAT! Excellent, entertaining, informative. There ARE other biz owners who love to talk about what they do! :) Thought it was just me. Keep it up!

I enjoy talking about it, because it’s interesting. I love it when I meet people who have “weird” businesses or jobs.

I looked through the FAQ's on shipping and didn't see an answer. I've ordered live ladybugs for the farm, as well as live crickets to set up my own growing program(for fish bait. I was a camp counselor in charge of fishing). In both instances, they came in cardboard box that I foolishly just cut open to inspect.

Ladybugs EVERYWHERE in the house!!!!! Crickets running wild(thankfully outside!)

Do you double box yours? Ship in a mesh bag or a plastic container in a box? Or just *BOOM* cockroaches and hornworms everywhere? Any fun horror stories to that effect?

The biggest “horror” story was back when I first started this. I kept the roaches in a spare bedroom in our duplex, and my wife and I slept down the hall. I had a tub get knocked over and we woke up at 6am to 2” long cockroaches crawling on us. There were literally thousands in our bedroom and our hallway. I had 30 days to get them out, and that’s when I moved them to our first building.

Horror story! Laughable in hindsight? :)

Oh yes! I honestly didn’t mind it, after awhile you become a bit desensitized to the bugs!

Agreed! I’m having an issue with Red runners, in my home. :/ either babies are escaping, or I dropped some.... no places for them to breed (hopefully) and Iv seem next to none for a couple months now where I was finding.... more Workin on my own question! :) will post soon. Hopefully your still here, I’m enjoying this and also wanna take a look at the FB one :). Great idea

Yeah I got rid of all our red runners for exactly that reason! They were too much of a risk for me to be comfortable shipping to customers!

We actually cup 90% of orders. So they will come in a deli cup within the outer box. If you order larger quantities we may pack them in a small box within the outside box, since large quantities don’t do very well in cups.

How’s the production been now since COVID started? It’s so weird to me that ordering kicked up, when I could only ever get dubias online anyway. My leopard gecko misses you!

Our production was down a little bit, but it’s back to normal now. And we should actually have an increase soon to handle the increased volume due to COVID.

just asking for my friend from mad max universe.

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how edible are they for a human? though of starting small bug farming for stuff.

They are edible. Not great tasting, but we did send some to a “bug chef” at one point. I’d have to look him up, he’s on YouTube though.

oh shit you replied. ok actual question. how hard are they to farm. or breed? some years back ive seen some news about farm in my country and that they require extremely little water and have the best weight gain ratio to any conventional farm animal.

Those are probably American cockroaches. They are more of a pest. Dubia roaches are from South America and are much more difficult. They require proper temps, humidity levels, food, hydration, and even light cycles to breed and grow optimally. It took me many years to get somewhat consistent growth and production, and even now it still varies by 20-30% each month.

Do you do anything to regulate the air quality in your facility for the human workers? Roach molts can be aerosolized rather easily if I remember right.

Or is that more in the realm of urban myth

Edit some spelling stuff

We actually have all of our HVAC units (currently over 50 of them) set to run the fan 24/7 and we use high MERV filters on them that are replaced weekly. On top of that we have each room pressurized and the air escapes through another high MERV filter out into the main warehouse space. And we run “scrubber” fans with filters as well. Plus if all else fails we provide masks/respirators.

That is comprehensive. My inner accountant shudders at it lol. But good on you for taking the steps for worker safety.

Oh it’s ridiculous, we spent tens of thousands on electricity/gas per month, thousands on electricity and gas, and have a full-time maintenance/HVAC guy on staff!

Do you have vegan friends? If so, what do you tell them you do for a living?

Whenever someone asks what I do, I just tell them flat out. Pets have to eat. 😊

Do you guys pursue any business to business relationships? Have to/do you sponsor animal companies in any way?

Had a longer post but I confused a bot and it got taken down so I’ll hit you up with some info!
Love the AMA, love your attention to customer service , and will refer you guys when we can!

I’m sure you work with some huge popular you tubers, zoos, or breeders. I’m curious as to what it’s like to send excellent products to people who broadcast about them! Care to mention any? Keep it up :)

We actually haven’t done any of this yet, but I’ve planned to start doing things like this soon. I’m actually considering working with pet stores and reptile businesses, basically adding a page on our website where we can promote them in exchange for them promoting us. I think the community could benefit a lot by us all promoting each other! 😀

What kills them best or is there anything that roaches hate and avoid maybe?

The roaches we grow are not actually a pest species, so they are very easy to kill. If you have them in your home my best advice is to keep all food items in sealed containers and crumbs off the floor. If there is no food source they will not thrive. Also combat bait traps work wonders!

I believe dubia roaches are illegal to own in Canada. Are there certain states where dubia roaches are also illegal?

Yes, dubia are illegal for us to ship to Florida or Hawai’i. We actually sent some on accident years ago and got a very serious letter from the department of agriculture. Needless to say, we haven’t made that mistake again!

Do you have any pictures of what a colony looks like in one of your warehouses? Would love to see!

Facility

Colony

These are old photos, but it gives you an idea.

This is an awesome AMA!

You wouldn’t believe the things I’ve seen and done over the years, I’ve actually been told by many friends and family to start a tv show. Roach King? 😂

Where do you get all the egg crates? I keep my dubias in a bin where I compost my produce and I find my egg crates deteriorate quicker than I can eat eggs.

Side note: I am a loyal customer! You are a life saver!

We buy them by the pallet through Uline. It gets very expensive when you factor in shipping cost, and we could get them cheaper if they were used but quality is very important! And I like the ones from uline! 😀

How do dogs and cats like the meat?

Edit. Never mind. I visited your website and realised it's for lizards and the like. I thought you were making alternative meats

We’ve actually had some cats that love eating them!

Have you tried eating a cockroach?

Yes. Not my brightest idea.

How intelligent can cockroaches be? Have there been any instances with an insect you deal with that you were surprised by something they did?

Cockroaches are extremely intelligent. There is actually a lot of research on it. Just google “cockroach personality” and you’ll find a lot of very interesting information. One interesting fact is that they will pick specific ingredients out of their food depending on what they want/need. Our food has some corn meal in it and for whatever reason they always leave it at the bottom of the plate so when we replace their plates we always have a few tablespoons of corn meal per colony.

has there been any cases/accidents where u know, cockroaches were accidently set free, then everybody just freaked out? xDD

Not that I know of. But it sure would be crazy! We don’t have to worry about the roaches we sell though, they wouldn’t do any damage, and honestly I doubt they would make it far.

is your fav movie Snow Piercer?

is your fav anime character Kyouhukou?

I did enjoy Snowpiercer!

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We don’t use anything like that, but we have considered it. We do however have a decent understanding of the temps and food they go through to get to each size, and we know how long it takes between each size.

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It’s a lot of work and difficult to measure, but we are slowly working on it. We may actually hire a full-time person for data tracking and testing at some point. As of right now, there isn’t much research on roaches.

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That would be awesome!

Just a suggestion — contact a nearby university with a graduate entomology program. You can probably get a grad student to do the data work for free in exchange for being able to publish papers based on the data.

Great idea!

How hard was it to make connections with buyers? I've thought about doing something similar small scale as a side project but I just have no idea where to even start looking for someone to buy bulk insects outside of individual pet owners.

Actually 95% of our customers are individual pet owners.

Wait so ur telling me there are cockroaches in my dogs kibble?

No we sell them live for reptiles, fish, chickens, etc.

What is your yearly revenue?

Our revenue for 2019 was over $4 million. This includes our pet store, insect sales, and reptile products.

why do you do this?

I have had a passion for reptiles since I was a kid, and although it took several years I do make a good living.

This is neat! I’m 28 and a hobbyist beekeeper. I’ve scaled up as much as my backyard will allow. It seems like the next step is specifically acquiring property for it, but that’s a huge scale up to get profitable again.

How did you decide to take that step?

It was a tough decision. I actually took out multiple loans over about 3 years. At one point I had over $200,000 in credit card debt and $250,000 in PayPal and Shopify loans. $450k at around 30% interest is not a great situation to be in, especially at 24. But it paid off. It was however calculated risk, and I would not have done it if I wasn’t 98% positive it would work out for me!

Feel free to message me, I’d be willing to help out in any way I can.

Is there money in that field of business?

Yes there is some, but it’s honestly not a highly profitable business. We operate on approximately a 10% profit margin. It’s a volume based business. We made little to no money until we started doing $2 million in annual revenue.

What possessed you to become a cockroach farmer?

I don't mean that in a mean way, it's just something I have never heard of, therefore would never cross my mind to aspire to be one.

It’s been a dream ever since I was a kid. Kidding! I actually grew up with reptiles and before roaches became a big thing I saw an opportunity to grow them on a large scale.

How far away are we from seeing dubias in pet stores as feeders as common as we see crickets?

I love everything about dubias compared to crickets, as far as feeders go. However my chameleon is just not attracted to them even when they're highly active. Any advice?

Actually they are already in Petco and Petsmart, and a fairly large number of local pet stores. We only work with small pet stores right now, and I don’t see that changing for us. We like to focus on retail only whether that’s retail cups for small stores or individual cups for people with a pet or two.

What is your favorite movie, and why is it Creepshow?

Favorite movie? That’s a tough one. I have so many favorites!

But not Creepshow? C'mon man... I'm disappoint

Umm.... I’ve never seen it. Don’t worry, I’ll watch it!

Can I send the roaches in my house to your farm? I'm sure you will give them a good home.

Sure! Jk we actually have a very strict policy on bringing anything into our facilities, since we provide the perfect environment for other insects to thrive. One wrong insect getting into our facility and it could mean the end of our business.

I'm gonna guess cockroaches don't gross you out anymore?

Oh not at all! Well I take that back... German cockroaches absolutely gross me out. They are nasty!

Are cockroaches suitable for human consumption?

I’d say yes, but they can cause allergic reactions similar to shellfish so I think crickets and worms might be a better solution.

So, I want to say this is gross, but I’m open-minded. You called American cockroaches nasty and mentioned how the ones you breed (and most roaches) aren’t pests, so maybe there’s something I’m not seeing.

In the politest way possible... why isn’t it gross to be breeding roaches?

There are over 4,500 species of cockroaches in the world and less than 30 re considered pests. Many are not gross at all, we just see the pest species and immediately write them off as nasty! 😊

Do you think cockroaches (and other bugs) would be a feasible source of food for humans in the near future?

Oh definitely! I don’t think places like the US will adopt this practice for a very long time, but a lot of poverty stricken areas will have to.

Do people in your area widely know what’s going on in your facilities?

Like, it sucks living near, say, a dog food plant or a rice mill, but I’d think most people would be eeked out by roach nation.

Or is it rural enough to hire all the neighbors?

We try to stay far enough from houses where we don’t have anything to worry about. Actually even if we did have some get out there’s no risk of anything. Our roaches are pretty high maintenance!

Which country/region gets the "most" cockroaches?

I’m not sure on that, but I do know that most large cities have pest species really bad. Especially in places like Florida and California where it’s warm.

If one were to buy, let's say, 1 million roach, in the intend to "forget" them in some place he doesn't like, would that be considered terrorism?

If it’s not considered an act of terrorism, it probably should be!

Do you take extremely large orders? By that, I mean a single order of several hundred thousand or more.

I watched a video on youtube where a company in China breed them as well to literally eat food waste and they munch through a ton!

I was wondering if people order in bulk like they must do.

Actually right now most orders are limited to 1,000 or less. I think the most we ever sent out to one person was about 50,000. They are expensive cockroaches so even 50,000 of them could cost between $2,000 and $10,000.

Wow, I would never have imagined they'd be so expensive. What do you feed them?

We feed a high quality blend of grains made in a level 2 bio-control feed mill. We go through around 10 tons of chow per month. Yeah, they are expensive!

Gawd... They eat like kings!

Yeah I think our current food bill is $15k per month.

i own tarantulas, as do i own a very small colony of dubia roaches, how do i produce these roaches the most effective way so i have a unlimited amont of tarantula food?

it seems like they are producing but there are ALOT of very small roaches.

That’s usually how it goes, since it takes so long for them to grow. It’s all about patience. The only things you can really do to help are simply making sure there is always access to food and water, and have temps around 80.

How do you butcher the cockroaches?

Butcher? We sell them live! Shipped right to your door!

Why do u farm COCKROACHES??Are you afraid of them??And why does the pet food industry need roaches??

I have a passion for reptiles and bugs. I make money doing it. And hell no I’m not afraid of them. :) so we mainly sell them live for people with reptiles, amphibians, inverts, fish, chickens, etc.

Do you ever bring them home on accident in your clothing and does it stink?

Not very often. I used to be a lot more hands on, but now I just walk around telling people how to do their job. A couple years ago I’d have them get on me all the time, but now I’m allergic to them and I have to stay away as much as possible. They do stink but no worse than a farm. In fact, with all the air filtration we run it’s getting better by the month.

As a customer of yours already, this is great information. As someone who would like to build their own colony to be a little more cost effective, how long would it take to build a colony that could sustain one adult beardie? Is it true that Dubia will not procreate in lower temperatures?

Thanks for being a customer of ours! First off, dubia will produce as long as they are 75 degrees. They will probably produce at lower temps but the lower the temp the slower they will produce. BUT they will live longer so you’ll still get production, just over a longer period of time. Regarding the colony, I highly recommend against starting a colony. We still don’t know the long term effects on health, and I personally have had asthma and respiratory issues doing this. I’m starting to take things much more seriously than I used to and I’m even testing and monitoring our air quality in our facilities to find out what it takes to achieve safe air quality levels. The last thing I want is for myself or employees to have long-term health issues. If you do want to start a colony it should only take a few months to have a colony that can sustain a bearded dragon.

What is the air quality issue that comes from cockroach colonies? Can you tell more about the potential health impacts?

There are quite a few health related issues caused by cockroaches. Asthma is a big one! There has been research showing that children who are raised in environments with cockroaches have a higher likelihood of being diagnosed with asthma. They also spread germs, but not the roaches themselves. The germs are simply spread from dirty areas since that’s where they tend to live.

How is your love life?

I’m married and have two kids, so it’s not absolutely terrible. 😜

Why?

Why not?