Shipping In Winter?

B

Box O' Bugs

Ootheca
What is an inexpensive, lightweight method to insulate roaches during shipping in winter?

I want to avoid using a heat pad, as I heard they are heavy and sometimes will cause the box to overheat.

Any suggestions?

 
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Styrofoam is the easiest way to go and most commonly used. I'd still use a small heat pack and keep it wrapped up and separated from the roaches being shipped. If there's some separation, no one should get too hot. I know some people will just use newspaper and a heat pack in the winter, but I think that heavily depends on where you're shipping to. 

 
Small heat packs actually meant for that sort of thing are usually safe, assuming they're separated from the bugs. But, really, you should find out (or get the buyer to find out) the lowest possible temps in the area and refuse to ship if it's just too cold. A lot of services that ship live animals will shut down for the winter if they're located somewhere really cold. 

Styrofoam is good insulation, provided it's on all six sides, and it's pretty cheap. 

 
We ship with newspaper and a 72 hour heat pad. It does add to the weight of the package thus costing a bit more to ship but simply add a buck more to the prices for winter and let the buyer know the cost of the heat pad is included the price of the sale.

 
We live in North Dakota so in our experience dealing with crickets they don't do well with shipping even with a heating pad at about 35-40 degrees. About half die. Local pet stores go into a shortage of cricket feeders. Turkistans aren't picky about the moisture that develops in the enclosed container when shipping with a heating pad.

We have no experience with lobster roaches so no advice on shipping them.

We learned through trial and error last year with shipping in winter what kind of containers suit which species we are selling and whether or not they will tolerate the condensation that may build up in a sealed container and a heat pad.

 
I create a styrofoam box inside the shipping box and place a 72hr heat pack on one side. The heat packs are safe as long as they aren't directly touching the insects' container. Just stuff some newspaper between them. I used to have cloth bags that worked very well when shipping in winter. They have great airflow and I don't have to worry about condensation.

In my experience lobster roaches are hardier than turkistans. Turks didn't seem to do that great regardless of what I did.

Even if using a heat pack do not ship or have something shipped if temps are below freezing. The heat pack may stop working.

 
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