An estimated 100,000 cockroaches share a countryside house with a 37-year-old woman in China, Yahoo News reported.
Yuan Meixia willingly cares for the roaches until she is able to sell them to a pharmaceutical company, which uses the insects for medicines, the South China Morning Post reported.
"These are all my children, my babies," Yuan told the Southern Metropolis News.
Although Yuan, a pharmacy employee, resides at a separate home in Siqian count, she visits the breeding house, in the Linbian village, every day.
A China Central Television program inspired the insect breeder to raise roaches after she saw the show last year.
"I saw people raise this kind of cockroach in Anhui," she said. "They said it can be food and also can be medicine...So I took tens of thousands of yuan to learn [how to breed them] for a week and spent more than 10,000 yuan ($1,600) to buy 20 kg (44 lbs.) of live cockroaches."
According to Yahoo News, the breeding house is equipped with zippered silk nets in the place of doors and cement seals across any hole where the insects can possibly escape.
By using a gas stove during the winter and sprinkling water on the wall during warmer months, Yuan maintains a temperate environment for the insects.
Palmetto bugs, common in the U.S, are a large-winged variety.
"The Palmetto bug and its extracts can protect liver functions when [the natural protein Concanavalin A] caused acute immunity hepatic injury among mice," researchers at Anhui Medical University have written.
Every night, fruit and rice bran is provided for the adults, and a bag of glucose for the baby cockroaches, or nymphs.
"They are most active at night, mating and hunting for food," Yuan said. "They mate with each other after eating. The mating process lasts for two hours, and then spawning [happens]. Every spawn hatches dozens of baby cockroaches."
With the nymphs hatching after about a month, Yuan has about 100,000 cockroaches at any given time.
After the roaches are drowned in vats of water and then dried in the sun, Yuan sells them.
"Those dried ones can be sold at 300 yuan to 400 yuan ($48-$64) per jin (1.1 lb.). I harvest every two months and dry 10kg to 20kg (22 lbs. to 44 lbs.) every time."
