CATDOLL : CATDOLL: What kind of animal is the golden cicada and why is it so valuable?

What kind of animal is the golden cicada and why is it so valuable?

The golden cicada is the nymph of the cicada, which is a cicada that has not completed the final molting.

As for why it is valuable, it is mainly because it is popular to eat it now. It is said that golden cicada is rich in protein, and also contains calcium, phosphorus, iron, and multiple vitamins and trace elements necessary for the human body. The protein content is 3.5 times that of lean beef, 4.3 times that of lean pork, 3.8 times that of mutton, 3 times that of chicken, 4 times that of carp, and 6 times that of eggs. It can be seen that the protein content of golden cicada nymphs is much higher than that of any animal meat and poultry eggs; and because it contains multiple nutrients necessary for the human body, it has an excellent auxiliary therapeutic effect on promoting growth and development, supplementing the consumption of the body's metabolism, and the rehabilitation of patients with physical weakness. Therefore, it has become a rare natural pollution-free high-quality nutritious food.

The golden cicada [Cyptotympana atrata fabricus] is a representative species of the Cicadidae family of the order Homoptera of the class Insecta. The adult is also called grasshopper cicada and black cicada, and the mature nymph is commonly known as climbing monkey, cicada turtle, cicada monkey, and climbing grasshopper.

Golden cicada has the characteristics of high protein, high nutrition, pure natural, pollution-free and pure green. Golden cicada is not only a traditional medicinal food, but also a commonly used Chinese medicinal material in my country. In various regions of my country, especially in the vast areas of the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River, there has been a habit of eating golden cicada.

What are the methods and techniques for breeding cicadas?

The video of the golden cicada breeding technology is as follows:

Select breeding trees: Dwarf fruit trees such as apricot trees, peach trees, apple trees or other dwarf shrubs are good trees for cicada breeding. Pay attention to timely pruning of high branches to facilitate breeding management; interplant fruit tree seedlings between trees to increase the branches for cicadas to lay eggs; plant cicada eggs under the trees. Refer to the "Cicada Breeding Technology" for methods.

Build breeding greenhouses: Build breeding greenhouses before the cicadas are about to emerge, with an area of ​​1 mu for each. Use cement columns or bamboo sticks to build fences around the breeding area, with a row spacing of 5 meters. Use bamboo poles to build a frame in the middle, and then pull iron wire to fix it, and then cover it with nylon window screens. For breeding, choose high and dry land with convenient drainage and irrigation. Avoid building breeding greenhouses in low-lying land that is prone to water accumulation.

Management and epidemic prevention of seed insects: After the cicadas emerge from the ground, they have strong phototropism. In the early stage, they should be allowed to enter the greenhouse after they have emerged from the molts. When catching them, the molted cicadas will fly around and bump into the light, causing the seed insects to die. Therefore, all the cicadas that have emerged from the ground within the first week can be caught, and they can be allowed to naturally emerge and lay eggs after one week. The seed density is about 10,000 per mu, with males and females accounting for about 50% each. Each female cicada can lay 500 to 1,500 seed eggs. Each greenhouse can provide about 20 mu of cicadas for breeding.

Artificial hatching and breeding method of golden cicada

Golden cicada is an oviparous herb with high medicinal value. It has the effects of clearing blood and removing blood stasis, health care, and has a certain therapeutic effect on hypertension. However, the existing golden cicada has the disadvantages of long growth cycle, low survival rate, and is not suitable for collection. After several years of research and experiment, we have found that the golden cicada has a long growth cycle, low survival rate, and is not suitable for collection.

Golden cicada

Habits, and summarized a set of techniques for breeding cicadas.

1. Egg collection: Egg collection is done after the cicada lays eggs in autumn, usually around the seventh month of the lunar calendar. The cicada uses the small thorns on its tail to pierce the tender branches of one year old trees and lay eggs in the branches, mostly on juicy branches such as fruit trees. After laying eggs, the branches will dry up, so most branches with green lower ends and dry tips have cicada eggs.

2. Post-harvest processing: After collecting the branches with cicada eggs, remove the dry leaves, cut off the two ends, and bundle thirty branches into a bundle. Spread a layer of sand on the bottom of a large washing basin, and put the bundled branches upright in the basin. Keep the temperature at 28-34 degrees and the humidity moist. Spray it when it is dry. Use a sprayer to spray the branches until they are thoroughly wet.

3. Hatching: The larvae will hatch in about 45 days. At this time, you will see some larvae crawling up and down on the branches. When about 20% of the larvae have hatched, they should be buried. The burial pit should be selected in an area with many fine and soft hair roots so that the larvae can absorb nutrients from the roots. It is best to choose a broad-leaved tree plot planted with poplars, willows and fruit trees.

4. Sowing: Dig a pit into a strip shape, the depth should be mainly to the hairy roots, and the width should be one shovel. Put the branches with hatched larvae into the pit, and the larvae will hug the plant roots by themselves. Be gentle and slow when returning the soil. Do not step on the soil after returning it, and do not water it to ensure ventilation.

Golden cicada

5. Harvesting: If there are trees, wrap them with transparent tape at a distance of one meter to prevent the cicadas from climbing high to metamorphose. Cicada ants will become adults 18-24 months after sowing.

6. Tips: Cicada eggs are collected mainly from wax branches and fruit tree branches. Cicada egg larvae feed on the juice of plant roots, so it is best to choose a multi-root area when burying. Each branch contains 200-400 cicada eggs, so 500-800 branches per mu are appropriate to ensure the survival rate. Using this method to grow golden cicadas can advance the original growth period of 3-5 years to 18 months, the hatching period from the original one year to about 40 days, and the survival rate from the original 6% to about 30%-60%. Therefore, it is particularly suitable for breeding in rural areas.

The price of cicadas has been rising, and cicadas have been served on the tables of restaurants of all sizes. The prospects are promising. The survival rate of cicadas grown in this way is high. If the minimum survival rate is 30% per mu of land, about 100,000 cicadas can survive. If each cicada is sold at 10 cents, the income can reach tens of thousands of yuan.

Fried Cicada

In my country, many regions have the custom of eating cicadas (a representative species of the Cicadidae family, with adults also called golden cicadas and nymphs commonly known as cicada turtles) and their nymphs (i.e. cicada turtles), especially in Shandong. The most common way to eat them is "fried golden cicadas". Cicada nymphs have extremely high nutritional value, medicinal value and unique taste, and are the best among edible insects. They have now become famous dishes suitable for various grades and occasions. In addition, when the mature nymphs of cicadas change into adults, the outer shell shed is called cicada slough (also known as "cicada slough" or "cicada skin"). Its main components include chitin and protein, and it tastes sweet, salty and cold. It enters the lung and liver meridians and is an important pungent and cool Chinese medicine for relieving exterior symptoms.

Golden cicada

However, due to environmental damage and felling of trees, the living environment of cicadas and nymphs has been severely damaged, resulting in a sharp decline in the natural production of nymphs and other products year by year, and the market price has also been rising year by year and remains high. As social demand continues to increase, relying solely on collection is far from meeting market requirements. For this reason, many places have begun to shift the way of natural resource collection to artificial large-scale breeding.

Artificial breeding

Below, based on our three years of practical experience and the relevant information we have mastered, we will focus on introducing the artificial breeding technology of cicadas as follows:

Let's talk about the natural habits of grasshopper cicadas first: grasshopper cicadas generally complete one generation in 3 to 5 years. They hibernate in groups of eggs on young branches of the current or biennial year and in nymphs of various ages on plant roots in the soil. That is, there are two types of overwintering insects, eggs and nymphs of different sizes; the overwintering places are also divided into two environments: aboveground and underground. The overwintering eggs begin to hatch in mid-May of the following year, and the peak hatching period is from late May to early June, and the hatching activity ends in late June. The egg period is nearly 300 days. The activities of overwintering nymphs are most affected by ground temperature and host plant sap. When the temperature is higher than 10℃~15℃, the tree sap begins to flow, and the overwintering nymphs begin to pierce and suck food. The nymphs hatched from the overwintering eggs (called cicada ants) dive into the soil and suck sap from the roots of the host plants. As the age increases, soil chambers of different sizes and shapes are created to live in. Part of the wall of the soil chamber is attached to the roots of the plant for feeding. When the temperature drops in autumn, they burrow into the deep soil to hibernate, and when the spring warms up, they migrate upward to live near the roots of trees.

Golden cicada

The number of nymphs in the soil is the largest in May of the year. This is when a large number of overwintering eggs are hatched and buried in the soil. It is also the period when the last-instar nymphs are about to emerge from the soil and molt into adults. After completing the entire life cycle of the nymphs in the soil, the mature nymphs drill out of the soil from late May to mid-to-late August, and crawl to the branches of shrubs, stems of weeds, etc., and fix on the bark and branches with their claws and thorns on their front feet, and molt into adults. The peak period for the emergence of adults is from mid-June to mid-July, and the end period is in early October. About 20 days after the emergence of adults, they mate and lay eggs. They start laying eggs in late June. The peak period for adult egg laying is from the end of June to late August, and the end period for egg laying is from early September to early October. The last appearance of adults is in early November. Adults mostly emerge at 8 to 10 o'clock at night and 4 to 6 o'clock in the morning, and the male-female ratio is basically maintained at a ratio of 1:1. Adults often live on tree trunks and branches, and have the habit of fighting fire at night. Adults lay eggs on one- or two-year-old branches with a thickness of 2 to 7 mm. The eggs are laid in the wood of the branches, and the egg nests are close together. There are 6 to 8 eggs in each egg nest, and there are 12 to 479 eggs in an egg-laying branch, usually 20 to 200 eggs, with an average of 146 eggs. There are 6 to 146 egg holes on each branch. Each female insect usually carries more than 500 to 1,000 eggs in its abdomen. The life span of adults is about 3 months, and the occurrence period is generally from July to September each year. Adults have wings and can fly, and they feed on sucking nutrient juices from young branches of trees with piercing and sucking mouthparts. After mating, female cicadas insert their ovipositors into the wood of tender branches of the current or two-year-old branches before laying eggs, and then lay eggs. At the same time, the tender branches are dehydrated and dried up, which will cause harm to the trees. Cicadas like hawthorn, peach, apple, elm and other trees with soft wood and rich juice.

Six aspects

Let's talk about its artificial breeding technology: To successfully breed cicadas, we should focus on the "six links" of seed source acquisition, host plant selection, breeding site selection, and protective measures configuration:

The first step: obtaining the source of cicadas. Primary sources can be collected naturally in the field. Eggs, nymphs, and adults can all be collected as sources. All stages of insects can be collected from July to September; August to September is the best season for collecting nymphs; September is the best time to collect cicada egg branches, and they can be collected all year round. To collect eggs, you can choose an ideal place with dense trees and many cicadas. Use fruit branch shears or a long pole with a hook on the top to lightly remove the 1-2 year old thin dry branches on the tree that have been killed by cicada eggs. Any one side is flat and dry with an incomplete surface, and there are a large number of milky white long oval eggs embedded in the subcutaneous wood. It is cicada eggs. Cut off the excess eggless dead branches above the egg-laying nest, leave 10-15 cm eggless branches below the egg-laying nest, and bundle about 50 into a small bundle and put it in a plastic bag. To capture nymphs, naturally mature nymphs are targeted. Nymphs can be collected by illuminating the base of the tree trunk with a flashlight between 7 and 12 p.m. After collection, they are placed in a gauze cage to hatch and lay eggs. Shrub-like hosts are planted in the gauze cage, mainly various fruit trees. There are many ways to capture adult cicadas on trees, such as using fire to lure them at night. To ensure that adult cicadas are not damaged, wheat gluten can be used to catch them. The method is to rinse the kneaded dough with water several times to remove the starch, leaving pure gluten, store it in a wide lotus leaf or poplar leaf, stick it to the top of a bamboo pole, and catch the adult cicadas in the early morning or during the day.

The second stage: breeding of cicada egg branches. The breeding targets are newly hatched nymphs and eggs that are about to hatch. The egg-bearing branches collected directly from the wild or from the seed source site are

Concentrate indoors to promote hatching. Method: In a plastic box 70 cm long, 40 cm wide and 20 cm high, spread 5 to 10 cm thick fine dry sand on the bottom, place the egg branches in bundles vertically or horizontally on it, and constantly spray mist with a small sprayer to maintain high humidity around the branches with eggs, so that excess water droplets are adsorbed in the fine sand at the bottom. The hatching of eggs should be checked continuously in the middle. When nymph activity is found, the branches and fine sand can be placed in the breeding site. The breeding time is generally from September to October (two-year eggs) or from June to July (single-year eggs). Dig a regular narrow groove about 30 to 50 cm deep under the host plant tree in the breeding site, about 1 meter away from the base of the trunk, such as ring, square, triangle, parallel or radial shapes, for the purpose of later digging and harvesting. After "breeding", cover the soil and compact it, and keep records of the time, quantity, "breeding" groove shape and depth. It takes three winters and summers (actually two years) for a cicada to grow from the egg stage to a mature nymph underground. In the first year, it starts growing in June, and its annual weight is only about 1 gram. In the second year, its weight grows to about 3 grams. In the third year, the nymph matures and weighs 4.5 to 5 grams.

The third step: provide high-quality feed for cicadas. Choose healthy tree species with well-developed root systems, lush growth, and more juice, such as poplar, elm, willow, tung, or various fruit trees in the orchard. Also intercrop some root vegetables such as potatoes, sweet potatoes, and yams.

The fourth link: provide good environmental conditions. The depth of the "breeding" of cicadas should be 30 to 50 cm. The soil should be sunny and frost-proof. The soil should be soft, fertile and pollution-free. It should not be too dry, nor should it have too much water or water accumulation. It should ensure that the root system of the host plant grows and develops normally and that the young plants are tender, developed and juicy. In winter, wheat straw, rice straw, corn straw, etc. should be covered in the breeding area to maintain the ground temperature.

The fifth ring: build facilities for the production of adults and nymphs. In addition to collecting cicada eggs naturally, you can build a gauze greenhouse to provide space for adults to lay eggs. You can use the fruit trees in abandoned orchards, and replant fruit tree seedlings. Use cement columns or bamboo sticks to build fences around them, and then pull iron wires in the middle, and cover the outside with nylon window screens. The emerged or collected adults can mate and lay eggs in them, and the number of adults can be retained as needed in the future, without having to collect seed sources from the wild.

The sixth ring: do a good job of epidemic prevention. There are many natural enemies of nymphs (cicada turtles) after they emerge from the soil and adults after they emerge from the pupa, such as toads, snakes, rodents, hedgehogs, wild cats, sparrows and mantises, all of which like to eat nymphs. Microorganisms such as Beauveria bassiana, Metarhizium anisopliae and Entomogenetic algae also cause parasitic damage. In addition, floods and pollution from pesticides and fertilizers are also harmful to nymphs or cicadas, so they should be paid attention to and protected during breeding. The most important seasons are the egg stage on the tree, the occurrence period of "cicada ants", and the emergence period of mature nymphs. The natural enemies of the egg stage on the tree and the occurrence period of cicada ants are mainly ants and red flower bugs. The treatment measures are to use 100 times the solution of strong ammonia to wash the branches with eggs or DDVP, strong chlorine, etc. to treat the soil.

The harvesting and processing of golden cicada

The best season for field harvesting is from around the summer solstice to early August, with the most concentrated harvest in early July or after rain. The nymphs (cicada turtles) dig holes in the soft ground with a pair of sawtooth-like front feet. After crawling out of the ground, they move on the ground for a short period of time, and then prepare to molt on the tree trunk or trellis. They will emerge as adult cicadas at 4 to 6 am the next morning. You can use a flashlight to catch them on the ground and trunks under the tree at night, or catch the young adult cicadas on the tree in the early morning. The harvest of artificially raised nymphs should be dug from the ground in time according to the market price during the harvest season or allowed to emerge freely. In the production season, wash the harvested fresh nymphs with clean water to remove the mud and sand, and place them in a box of 50 grams. Fill the box with water to submerge the nymphs in the box and store them in the refrigerator. After rewashing, they can be processed and used. There are long-term storage methods for nymphs, such as freezing or pickling, and short-term storage methods, such as flooding with water, soaking in dilute salt water, or natural storage after emerging from the ground. When eating, you can heat the pot and add a proper amount of peanut oil. When the oil is boiling, put the nymphs into the pot, fry them over a slow fire, put them on a plate, sprinkle a little fine iodized salt on them and eat them hot. The processing method of cicadas after removing their wings is the same as that of nymphs.

Golden cicada breeding should be developed as an industry Golden cicada, also known as climbing grasshopper, is known as Tang Monk's meat. Due to the high nutritional value and unique taste of golden cicada, as well as its multiple nourishing and medicinal functions on the human body, people have long compared eating golden cicada to "Tang Monk's meat" that can make people immortal. In recent years, with the improvement of people's living standards, golden cicada has become a delicacy on the tables of major hotels and restaurants. The production areas of golden cicada are mainly concentrated in Henan and Shandong. In urban and rural areas of our city, golden cicada has always been popular among citizens. But compared with previous years, the value of golden cicada has doubled, and diners are afraid of "cicada".

The boss' nickname is "Grasshopper Monkey"

In Yanghoudi Village, Chengjiao Township, Yucheng County, Yang Chengren, the owner of a coal briquette factory, has an intriguing nickname, "Climbing Grasshopper Monkey". Because when he was a child, Yang Chengren liked to "touch" climbing grasshoppers, and he always "touched" more than his friends. At night, he and his friends chatted and laughed along the way, "took down" the golden cicadas that were climbing trees, and raised a small bamboo pole to sweep down the adult golden cicadas one by one, which was very pleasant. At that time, because his family was poor and could not eat big meat, the golden cicadas made Yang Chengren full of food. "After the rain, there are the most golden cicadas." Yang Chengren recalled that when he was a child, one night after the rain, he and his father used window screens to catch golden cicadas from the small ditch at the head of the village. They caught two buckets of golden cicadas and sold them in the city the next day for more than 20 yuan. His father was very happy and took him to "touch" golden cicadas again the next night. That summer, his family earned more than 300 yuan just from selling golden cicadas. Seeing buckets of golden cicadas being brought to the city by his father, Yang Chengren's mouth watered. He stole a few while his father was not paying attention, ran to the back of the village and roasted them over a fire to eat. But his father found out about this later and beat him up. At that time, Yang Chengren felt wronged. Why should he sell the golden cicadas that he "touched" to people in the city? Now Yang Chengren is a boss and a rich man, but he still likes to "touch" the golden cicadas on summer nights. In his words, "the ones you buy are not as delicious as the ones you 'touch' yourself."

Yes, the eggs did not hatch into little cicadas that year, and even if they did, they could not survive on the ground.

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