Insect farming

[farang51]

In many threads, members ask what to farm, but I have not seen anybody mention insects. According to this article: https://www.equaltimes.org/insect-farming-is-not-only-good and this older article: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/wn7yqb/insect-farming-can-buy-you-a-toyota-in-thailand farming insects should be good business.

Does any of you have experience farming insects?

[IsaanAussie]

There has been a lot of discussion on farming insects. Worms, crickets and black soldier flies in particular. Even butterflies in the future. If your aim is to buy a Toyota as a result, then get some serious market connections before your start. 

 

[farang51]

42 minutes ago, IsaanAussie said:

There has been a lot of discussion on farming insects. Worms, crickets and black soldier flies in particular. Even butterflies in the future. If your aim is to buy a Toyota as a result, then get some serious market connections before your start. 

 

I must have used the wrong search terms; I couldn't find any posts.

 

I am not aiming for a Toyota, and I am certainly no farmer.  I contemplate writing an article about eating insects and insect farming in Thailand for my travel website.

[RichCor]

2 hours ago, farang51 said:

I must have used the wrong search terms; I couldn't find any posts.

I'd suggest working on your google skills.

 

If you're looking for posts specific to the ThaiVisa.com forum, try

 

Google Search: site:thaivisa.com insect farming

 

[gamb00ler]

1 hour ago, RichCor said:

I'd suggest working on your google skills.

 

If you're looking for posts specific to the ThaiVisa.com forum, try

 

Google Search: site:thaivisa.com insect farming

 

I use site:forum.thaivisa.com/topic in Google Advanced Search.  I sometimes add the year as a search term also to narrow it down to recent posts.  It seems very effective especially when compared to the TV search function.

[farang51]

Thanks, I only tried the search function in the forum ????

[IsaanAussie]

I have seen a few YouTube videos on insect farming here in Thailand, try that. 

[cooked]

You can visit large fresh food markets without seeing a single seller of insects. Even here in Isaan, the odd seller is hardly overrun with buyers. I have seen diverse insects deep frozen at Makro.

[jak2002003]

OP.

 

Have you looked into farming mealworms?  There is a demand for then..both mealworms and giant mealworms, also waxworms, small crickets and soldier flies for the exotic pet markets. 

 

Many people feed them to pet reptiles and exotic birds...also fish keepers feed insects to their fish.

 

I don't know about other areas of the country, but here in Chiang Mai sometimes the supply does not meet demand of these live foods..

 

Just a thought. ????

[kickstart]

It has been done some farmers around have reared Jing-Ret, Crickets just a small 8x4 hutch with a few branches in for shelter ,most are feed on vegetables ,beans cabbages ,etc ,about 40-50 day turn around ?.

The main problem is the market and the buyer, the buyer will often sell you the young crickets and you rear them, but the market is very volatile goes up and down mainly down ,and he  will buy them  back from you at his price, as he knows he is probable the only buyer, he will try and lower the price and normal succeeds.

Most farmers I know doing it are dairy farmers, earning a bit of pin money ,most only do it once ,maybe twice never any money in it.

Like a lot of things you must do your homework ,find more than one buyer ,wife of a friend of mine was rearing rats ,sold them could not get  the female pregnant ??, anyway, all her contacts where on FB.  

[Grumpy John]

Our local insect farmer certainly drives a Toyota Hi-Lux.  Not as fine as the one in the pix but it gets him around.  ????

[farang51]

2 minutes ago, Grumpy John said:

Our local insect farmer certainly drives a Toyota Hi-Lux.  Not as fine as the one in the pix but it gets him around.  ????

Who needs a new Toyota Hi-Lux when you have a Ferrari under the tarpaulin. ????

[RichCor]

6 minutes ago, Grumpy John said:

Our local insect farmer certainly drives a Toyota Hi-Lux.  Not as fine as the one in the pix but it gets him around.  ????

One would hope it would be a 'little better' as the one pictured looks to have a problem with its front suspension. 

[worgeordie]

Insect Farming ... it's not easy milking a cricket

regards worgeordie

[Grumpy John]

10 minutes ago, RichCor said:

One would hope it would be a 'little better' as the one pictured looks to have a problem with its front suspension. 

Thai creativity could sort that out.  Like the old woman that comes through the village regular with a Nissan 620 pick-up...fitted with a Kubota single banger stationary engine!  A sleeper Lot E Tan if ever there was one.  Haven't seen it parked anywhere so no pixs.  No bonnet on that one so everyone can see what it is.  

[young Farrang]

I have 5 years experience farming Thai crickets and can confirm it is a good business which has made my Thai girlfriend's family financially stable without needing any support.

 

 

When we first met I was quite curious about the small existing cricket hustle they were doing from home as the picture above. they had a total of 11 "cricket-circles" which provided a total of between 25-40kg at 130 THB/kg (3250-5200 THB) of crickets per month. They had no problem selling everything every month and the demand far outweighed the supply.  

 

Knowing the numbers I was obviously wondering why they did not expand their current cricket hustle into a real business. The answer was simple - not enough space under the roof and it had never crossed their minds to build more roof space.

 

I asked, what if you had 400kg of crickets a month, could you still sell it all? The answer was an easy yes. So a few calculations later I convinced her family to sell half their life savings in gold worth 100k THB (you know this is not something Thais take lightly!) and we hired some engineers to build two cricket farms on some of their empty land.

 

 

4 years later, with the 100K investment I forced them to make, they are now making between 30-40k THB a month in profits (from the previous 10k factory job from my gfs father, and a couple 1000 a month from her stay-at-home mother growing some veggies and fruits)

[RichCor]

Quote

On 7/28/2020 at 9:26 PM, farang51 said:
I contemplate writing an article about eating insects and insect farming in Thailand for my travel website.

2 hours ago, young Farrang said:

I have 5 years experience farming Thai crickets and can confirm it is a good business which has made my Thai girlfriend's family financially stable without needing any support.

I expect your post just became a free content for somebody's travel website...

 

[sammieuk1]

If you want to go cockroach farming spray a can of raid down the drain like I once did it was like something from indiana jones and you get enough stock for a lifetime????

[farang51]

2 hours ago, young Farrang said:

I have 5 years experience farming Thai crickets

Sounds great, I will send you a PM sometime next week if that is OK.

 

29 minutes ago, RichCor said:

I expect your post just became a free content for somebody's travel website...

 

That's not the way things work for a website that takes intellectual property serious.