Taiwanese student who farms and sells cockroaches makes nearly $80,000 a year

A 20-year-old Taiwanese university student makes some TWD200,000 ($6,622; £5,072) a month from his cockroach farm.

According to a China Press report, the student, who goes by the name Tong, began breeding the cockroaches in his apartment over a year ago after he found it troublesome to buy these pests to feed his pet.

The insects started to multiply at an alarming rate, and in six months he had 30,000 to 40,000 cockroaches in his apartment.

Tong said it was difficult at first to raise the bugs in such high numbers because he had a fear of cockroaches. He also said that he had to overcome nightmares about the creatures every night for over a month, according to World of Buzz.

He then met a buyer by the name of Tse who offered to acquire all of the cockroaches. They continued to work together with Tong managing a cockroach farm.

The student has now over 2.7 million cockroaches of different species in the farm. He sells them wholesale to Tse who retails the pests as pet food.

Tong's business helps him make nearly $80,000 (£61,280) a year, some $5,000 more than the golden number of happiness cited by a Princeton University Woodrow Wilson School survey.

The student is not the only one to benefit from cockroach farming. Wang Fuming, a 43-year-old farmer from China's eastern province of Shandong, also rears cockroaches, the Periplaneta americana.

"I make over a million yuan ( £126211) a year and we expect to quadruple our output this year, " Fuming said in an interview in 2014 as quoted by The National website.

Cockroaches are a good source of protein and nutrients for the many amphibians, insects and reptiles. Depending on the size and type of roach, some lizards can eat up to twenty or more at a time.

They also make a nutritious diet for many types of household pets, such as iguanas.