tong fed?

[2oh1]

I'm curious on how u guys taught ur frogs to be tong fed? i think it'd be way more easier for me to tong feed my frog over leaving the crickets in his cage

[GrifTheGreat]

There are a lot of advantages to tong feeding. You'll know exactly how much your frog ate, and you don't have to worry about it swallowing as much dirt. Crickets can be very aggressive and can sometimes injure your frog. Also, there have been many times when I thought my frog ate the crickets and then I find them buried in the substrate later. You still have to be careful with tongs since the frogs can injure themselves trying to bit them. I recommend the rubber tipped ones.

As for teaching them, well, I think it varies a lot by frog. They have different personalities and levels of aggressiveness. For example, my baby green Cranwelli is more aggressive and took to tong-feeding right away. However, my Cranwelli Grif hated the forceps and refused to eat from them for like the first seven months we had him. He would get extremely agitated if he so much as saw them. A few weeks ago we fed Grif hornworms for the first time and he became a total hornworm addict. He was so ravenous for them that he didn't care whether they came from my fingers or the forceps! After that he would take other worms from the forceps (night crawlers and such) and now he will usually take anything from them. So perhaps it is simply a matter of finding the right food to tempt them with. Also, I think he realized that eating from the forceps required less energy, and pacmans are quintessentially lazy! But like I said, I think it varies a lot by frog. I've heard several people say that they're frogs won't eat from forceps either. Good luck!

[MeTree]

Yeah, my young male cranwelli never would tong feed. Sort of a personality thing.

Like Grif said, it is good to use rubber tipped tongs because often Pacman Frogs will lunge for their food. With sharp, stainless steel tongs, you run the risk of an injury during feeding. You may be able to find rubbertipped tongs at a local pet store, but they are somewhat hard to find. I recomend this pair of feeding tongs from one of our site sponsers, Josh's Frogs. I always try to buy from site sponsers when I can. I have made several orders from Josh's Frogs, and they are awesome!

[GrifTheGreat]

@ MeTree: yup, that's the exact pair I have! I had to order them from Josh's Frogs because stinky ol' Petsmart doesn't carry anything like that. I got my order quickly and am very happy with the product.