Although dubia roaches are more commonly thought of as a food source for various reptiles in the pet owning community, more and more people are actually starting to either keep dubia roaches as pets or set up their own breeding operations for their dubia roaches to provide a constant food supply to their reptiles or amphibians who can eat them.
A cheap breeding tank for dubia roaches can offer high yields of roaches helping to keep your costs down over the long term so stocking it with some initial dubia roaches and then letting them breed can workout to be much cheaper than just purchasing the roaches yourself.
This has resulted in more and more people reaching out to ask various questions about pregnant dubia roaches though due to there really not being much information online about how to actively breed dubia roaches.
With so many people reaching out with so many questions about keeping pregnant dubia roaches recently, we have decided to publish this article in the hope of being able to help as many of our readers as possible.
We really do see a wide range of questions about keeping pregnant dubia roaches but the majority of people usually have one of four questions so that is what we will be focusing on for today’s article.
The table of contents below should make it as quick and easy as possible to quickly skip to the specific questions that you need answers for about a pregnant dubia roach though helping to save you time.
What Does A Pregnant Dubia Roach Look Like?
Pregnant dubia roaches carry their egg sack externally and drag it behind them with many people dealing with a pregnant dubia roach for the first time often being confused about whats the egg sack is.
This is totally normal for a pregnant dubia roach and the egg sack will range from a dark brown or red to a yellow depending on the diet of the dubia roach with the full color range of the egg sack being considered healthy.
Other than that, a dubia roach carrying fertalized eggs will not look much different to any other dubia roach but the egg sack can be a little strange to see on your roach for the first time.
Once you understand what the egg sack is, it starts to make more sense though and you will sometimes notice that the roach will start to take extra care in their movements to reduce the risk of them rupturing the sack and putting their babies at risk.
As we touched on above, there is a range of colors that the egg sack can be and with the full color range being considered normal for a pregnant dubia roach.
The majority of people will see a dark brown or dark red egg sack but in some situations, it can look like a shade of yellow but this is not a cause for concern and is considered healthy, just rare for most diets of captive dubia roached.
How Long Do Dubia Roaches Stay Pregnant?
The majority of dubia roach pregnancies will last for around thirty days with the egg sack hatching into live nymphs if the egg sack has been cared for correctly by the mother.
In some situations, usually due to temperature issues, it can take as long as 40 days for the live nymphs to hatch out of the egg say but this is rare.
Unless you are specifically trying to breed your dubia roaches, it can be difficult to workout exactly when the female dubia roach was bred.
This can make it difficult to track the pregnancy and workout a due date for the live young hatching from the egg sack and after about day seven of the egg sack forming, it can be difficult to gauge any type of differences to estimate when the baby dubia roaches will hatch.
Depending on your tank setup that you keep your dubia roaches in, there may be potential hazards that can cause issues with the egg sack such as it rupturing and causing problems with the baby dubia roaches developing.
The tissue surrounding the egg sack is surprisingly tough though so it can usually be dragged over a range of substrates without issue so this is rare but can happen.
How Many Babies Do Dubia Roaches Give Birth To?
The majority of dubia roaches will give birth to around thirty dubia roach nymphs after around thirty days of breeding.
This does tend to be the norm for the majority of dubia roach pregnancies but sometimes, there can be as few as twenty nymphs or as many as 40 nymphs that emerge from the egg sack after the pregnancy.
In some very rare situations a pregnant dubia roach may be able to produce as many as fifty nymphs from a pregnancy but this is very rare and should not be expected.
If you are breeding your dubia roaches as a food source for your reptiles or amphibians that will eat them then expect an average of thirty nymphs per pregnancies and treat any extra as a bonus.
We have seen some people report that the first pregnancy of a dubia roach will usually result in more nymphs being produced but this is not correct.
Any dubia roach pregnancy can product a higher than average nymph yield and it doesn’t correlate to the first pregnancy of a dubia roach as it truly is random.
Do Dubia Roaches Eat Their Babies?
Female dubia roaches tend not to eat dubia roach nymphs but male dubia roaches have been known to eat their own nymphs, even if they are the father.
In some rare situations, a female dubia roach may eat some nymphs too so it is generally recommended that you place your nymphs in their own container until they grow a little to prevent them from being eaten by the adult dubia roaches in the tank.
This is why we recommend that our readers who are intentionally trying to breed dubia roaches as a food source for their reptiles or amphibians get a cheap breeding tank to hold their pregnancy roaches as well as a separate cheap breeding tank for their nymphs to live in until they mature.
This is a common practice and although it does increase your initial costs slightly, it really does drastically increase your nymphs yields per pregnancy and can reduce the cost requirements of your food bill moving forward for your reptiles.
Conclusion
That brings our article going over the common pregnant dubia roach questions that we see every month to an end. We hope that we have been able to help our readers better understand how they should go about breeding their dubia roaches and the process really is very simple. This is why so many people are starting to breed their own dubia roaches as a food source for their other pets as it really is cheap and easy.
