How to Raise Centipedes? A Detailed Guide to Scientific Breeding Techniques
The centipede is a very aggressive animal, with relatively strong venom, and it crawls extremely fast. However, this highly venomous centipede also has relatively high utility value, and it can even be eaten, with good effects on certain related medical conditions. Below we explain some methods for breeding centipedes.
Scientific Centipede Breeding Techniques
The centipede is a typical carnivorous insect, relatively fierce by nature, and relying on its jaw claws that can eject venom, it can prey on various small animals much larger than itself. The centipede has a wide range of food sources. Based on field observations and trial-breeding observations, and summarizing breeding experience from various regions, centipede feed mainly includes the following categories: one category is various insects, such as crickets, locusts, tobacco beetles, scarab beetles, rice borers, long-horned beetles, cicadas, grasshoppers, dragonflies, spiders, flies and bees, including their adults, pupae, larvae and eggs.
Another category is invertebrates such as worms, earthworms, snails and slugs, as well as the muscles, bones and internal organs of vertebrates such as frogs, snakes, lizards, geckos, sparrows, rats and bats. Yet another category is, when the above food sources are insufficient, a small amount of tender young grass, shoot tips, root tips, and melons and fruits such as watermelon and cucumber, as well as cooked products such as eggs, milk and bread. In addition, artificially raised centipedes in Zhejiang mainly feed on loaches, yellow eels, small fish, small shrimp and small crabs.
Although the centipede's food sources are broad and varied, it requires fresh food and does not eat rotten or smelly food. Therefore, during artificial breeding, fresh feed must be provided once every 2 to 3 days. Before feeding, the leftover feed from the previous time must be thoroughly removed. The centipede eats a large amount at one time and has strong hunger tolerance. When hungry, it can eat 1/5 to 3/5 of its own body weight in one feeding. After eating its fill, it will not starve to death even if not given food for ten days to half a month. At the same time, the centipede cannot tolerate thirst and needs to drink water every day. Therefore, water containers must be placed in the breeding area, and the water must be changed regularly to keep the drinking water fresh and clean.
Construction of Centipede Breeding Ponds
Artificial centipede breeding can use jar culture or pond culture. For jar culture, use old broken ceramic jars or pottery jars, with the narrowest part having a diameter of more than 0.5 m, buried mouth-down in the soil about 20 cm. Inside the jar, build up broken bricks or adobe in the middle, about 10 cm lower than the jar surface, leaving a certain gap between the adobe pile in the middle and the jar wall. If using an intact jar with no defects, do not break off the bottom; simply build up the adobe inside the jar. A jar with a diameter of 80 cm can hold about 200 adult centipedes.
For pond culture, the breeding pond should be built in a sunny, ventilated place with good drainage that is relatively humid and secluded. It can be built indoors or outdoors. Build it with bricks or stones, with a cement-rendered surface, and a height of 80 cm. The area of the breeding pond can be arbitrary, generally 5 sq m to 10 sq m. Spread fine stones or broken tiles on the ground; weeds and trees can also be planted in the pond to create as much as possible a natural ecological environment suitable for centipedes to inhabit. Around the inner walls of the pond, paste smooth, undamaged plastic film, or use glass pieces around the pond opening to form an inner rim about 15 cm wide at a right angle to the pond wall, to prevent centipedes from escaping and also to prevent harmful animals from falling into the pond. Generally, each square meter of breeding pond can hold about 500 to 900 adult centipedes.
Centipedes are afraid of sunlight and hide by day and come out at night. During the day they generally inhabit hillsides, fields, roadsides or places overgrown with weeds, and especially like to hide in abandoned ditches, desolate grave mounds, roadside crevices, and among stones and rubble. From Grain in Ear to the Summer Solstice, as the temperature gradually rises, centipedes prefer to live in dark, humid, warm, rain-sheltered and well-ventilated places. In late autumn, they mostly inhabit the lower slopes of loose-soil ditches sheltered from the wind and facing the sun, or inside tree holes. When the temperature is below 10°C, they stop eating, and at minus 7°C they enter the hibernation period. During hibernation, centipedes no longer move or eat, their bodies form an "S" shape, their antennae curl from outside inward, and their tail legs come together. The depth of overwintering潜伏 is directly related to the level of air temperature and soil temperature.
From egg hatching, through larval development, until adulthood, the centipede must undergo several molts. Each molt makes it noticeably larger. Adult centipedes molt once a year, while others molt twice. During molting, disturbance must be avoided, otherwise the molting time will be prolonged (generally it takes about 2 hours). At this time, attacks by swarms of ants must also be prevented, because a molting centipede has no ability to resist. Centipedes grow relatively slowly: from hatching into larvae in the first year, they only grow to 3 cm to 4 cm before that year's hibernation; in the second year they can grow to 3.5 cm to 6 cm; only in the third year do they reach more than 10 cm. Therefore, from egg development and growth into an adult and then to laying eggs again, the centipede needs 3 to 4 years
Mating and Reproduction of Centipedes
The centipede is ovoviviparous and reproduces quickly. Mating generally occurs in June, July and August. Under normal circumstances, it takes 4 months from mating to egg laying. When laying eggs, the female centipede digs a small pit in the soil, curves her body into an S shape, and the rear tail segment rests on the back of the middle part of the body due to the body's curvature. The eggs discharged from the genital pore accumulate on the back and stick together into a mass, then the body is turned to embrace the egg mass in a circle. The egg mass is generally about 60 to 70 eggs, and at least 20 to 30. After about 20 days, the centipede eggs shed the egg membrane and fetal skin. The hatched centipede larvae are milky white, and the female centipede still tightly holds the larvae in a mass among her legs. The larvae move very little. After 25 to 30 days, the larvae undergo their second molt; their body shape is similar to the adult, the body color is still milky white, and the middle part of the body is slightly fatter. After 35 to 42 days, they undergo their second molt, the body color becomes grayish yellow, their activity increases, and they no longer tightly hold together in a mass but are loosely concentrated on the ventral side of the mother. At this time, the larvae and mother can be separated; place the mother in a large group to let her mate, and give the post-laying centipede sufficient food, while the young centipedes are given small feed. (They can also be kept separately for laying; use a wide-mouth canning jar with soil inside and put the mother centipede in.)
Increase feeding before laying: centipedes do not eat or drink during the incubation period and rely on consuming their own nutrients to maintain activity. Before laying eggs, the mother has a habit of consuming a large amount of food to accumulate nutrients. At this time, the feeding amount should be increased, and attention should be paid to adjusting the variety of food to encourage the mother to eat more and increase her pre-incubation nutrition.
Care during incubation: during the period when the centipede embraces eggs and raises young, it reacts to some extent to disturbance and strong light. Therefore, during the incubation period, observations should be made carefully and gently; do not move it casually or shine strong light on it. Feeding is not needed during incubation. Provide a certain amount of water in the incubator at all times, with slight moisture around it, so that the normal development of the embryo will not be affected.
After incubation ends, although the young centipedes temporarily live in groups, they can also move and search for food independently. At this time, the mother gradually leaves the incubation nest and moves independently. Because centipedes have the odd habit of fighting over food, the strong bullying the weak and the large bullying the small, young centipedes of different sizes should be separated into different nests in a timely manner.
Controlling Breeding Density
When the living density of centipedes is too high or there is a lot of disturbance, they are prone to killing each other and dying. However, under breeding conditions, with the improvement of the living environment and breeding conditions, such as providing sufficient fresh feed and water sources and not increasing disturbances to their lives, even if the breeding density is relatively high, it has little effect on their lives. In particular, centipedes produced by the same mother, because they have lived together since childhood, can live together peacefully even when dozens of them curl up together after growing up. Therefore, providing sufficient fresh feed and water sources and maintaining a quiet environment are essential conditions for artificial centipede breeding. Unless raising seedlings is required, avoid mixing young centipedes produced in different breeding ponds as much as possible.
As described above, centipede breeding still requires a certain amount of technical skill and should not be done blindly. The centipede's attack speed is especially fast, and its venom is strong, so breeding centipedes also requires extra caution. The centipede has high medicinal value and a wide range of uses; it can be consumed after being processed into medicinal liquor, ground into powder, and by other methods.