Housekricket Smallscale Farming

The potential nutritional value of insects in general and the common house cricket, Acheta domesticus, in particular in human diets has long been recognized. In addition to providing a rich source of high quality proteins for human consumption, crickets and other related insects such as grasshoppers and locusts offer several other advantages as human food sources: they have a short life span, produce numerous offspring, are amenable to human cultivation, and can flourish under a wide range of environmental conditions. The main aims of this study were two: compare the yield of crickets raised on four different diets, and determine the amino acid, fatty acid, and mineral and trace element content of crickets grown under the best of these diets. The four diets were: aromatic-arboreal (AAD), dairy cow diet (DCD), DCD supplemented with yeast, and human refuse diet (HRD). The greatest yield (0.45 g per 10 g of feed) and highest survival (47.5%) of A. domesticus was achieved with HRD when grown for 9 weeks in 24 hours daylight. The protein content of crickets raised on all four diets ranged from 56.2 to 60.0% dry weight, and in all cases the essential amino acid score of the proteins approximated or exceeded the World Health Organization protein standard. The crickets contained 63–122 mg fatty acid per g dry weight, most of which was accounted for by palmitic acid, oleic acid, and the two fatty acids essential for humans, namely linoleic acid and a-linolenic acid. Crickets grown on any one of the diets contained significant quantities of the following minerals or trace elements: calcium (366–480 μg per g dry weight), copper (8.5–9.2 μg per g), iron (16.2–26.7 μg per g), and magnesium (255–306 μg per g). These data support the contention that crickets contain quantities of many nutrients that are essential to humans and show that the insect represents a commercially feasible source of food for human populations.