Bluegrass Crickets has been supplying zoos, pet stores and more where they study supply of crickets for decades.

Now the company is adding humans to its clientele list as it's working to produce a wide variety of edible and cricket based products.

So it's a seven day a week job.

You know, we're in here every day Christmas, Thanksgiving, New Year, taking care of crickets, just like, you know, cattle farmers taking care of, you know, beef cattle or anything else like that.

For the last 20 years, that company has been focused on shipping crickets to the zoo, to the bait shops, to pet shops, things like that for animals to eat.

Since I took over last January, I'm really focused on shifting our production to human consumption.

So.

So raising crickets for humans to eat.

It takes a lot less land, a lot less water, a lot less feed to raise crickets than it does any other source of protein.

There's also less greenhouse gases.

There's less transportation, all these things that play into the idea of other proteins.

Carbon tax or whatever.

We don't have that with the crickets.

So it's not a political thing.

It's not a I want to get rid of cows or anything else like that.

I look at it from a very pragmatic perspective.

So people that are interested in sustainability, this is a huge thing.

Then we have the people that are interested in health reasons.

You know, you have the you have fiber, you have protein, you have vitamins, you have all these micronutrients that you don't get with other sources of protein.

People that you know, alpha gal that can't eat red meat, they can eat crickets.

People that have gluten intolerance can use cricket flour to cook, bake with different things like that.

So there's a health side of it.

We'll have granola, we'll have protein bars, and then we'll have the whole crickets.

So really, it's kind of a a range of what you would want to do with it.

We actually own a commercial restaurant, so it has all the, you know, the health department inspections and certifications and all that kind of stuff.

So the production will take the place there.

It's really good.

It's a little bit weirder eating the whole crickets because you're kind of like, this is this is an entire bug that I'm eating it.

Like, that's not normal.

But they're really good.

You wouldn't even know when you're when you're actually eating it that it's a bug.

I won't.

Lie.

I probably expected worse because, you know, crickets don't necessarily sound appealing.

As soon as you hear the opportunity to eat them.

But they were actually really tasty.

You know, we couldn't tell them apart from, say, a crouton or something like that on a salad.

So it was definitely a better experience than I was anticipating.

But if you look into all the regulations, you know, for for food production, there's so many parts that are allowed.

And in regular consumable products, people don't realize when the compound goes through the wheat field that combining kick in out the crickets and, you know, grasshoppers and everything else.

So when they're eating, they're, you know, bag of corn chips of their, you know, their white bread with their baloney sandwich.

You know, there's bug parts that are mixed all into that.

You already eat bugs without knowing it.

There's a bugs allowed in your food, so you might as well just eat them on purpose because they're delicious.

Crickets for dinner, huh?

You first.

Bluegrass crickets will soon be relocating to a larger facility.

And Liberty owner TJ Ray Hill estimates that it'll be able to produce and sell.

Get this 1 million crickets per week.

Wow.