Are we feeding our pacman frogs too much??

[ICEMAN]

Hey gang,
I have kept a pacman frog for awhile now, but I still like to look at care articles from time to time to see if there is anything I can change to make my frog's life better. The thing that concerns me is that I have seen many care articles that say to feed the adult frogs 3-4 times a week as much as they can't eat in a sitting! It's no wonder I see so many pics of morbidly obese frogs. I understand pacmans are supposed to be kind of chunky, but the instructions for feeding are leading to a growing population of unhealthily fat frogs! I think that maybe we as keepers need to take a look at how wild frogs behave. They sit and wait for a meal to pass by and well, you know the rest. But the next meal may not come for WEEKS. Let it be known I am not proposing we starve our frogs, but I think we need to consider spacing meals a little farther apart. I understand our frogs are not in the wild, but we need to realize that millions of years of evolution has tuned this animal to be a certain way. They would not get huge meals many times a week in the wild, and their bodies are designed to handle that. I have an adult male cranwells that has eaten 2-3 times a week a diet of varied insects, with pinkies once a month. He has become a little heavier than what I consider to be a healthy pacman. I am going to experiment with spacing his meals out more, and try to slim him down to a healthy specimen. I encourage you all to take what I have said into consideration, and perhaps be able to keep our frogs happier and healthier. Thanks for reading!

[Mentat]

Myself thinks Pacmans in general do not overeat . That's not to tell, there is one out there, that will eat itself to death . More than food quantity, the issue is one of food quality .

Feed a Pacman a diet of night crawlers with some veggie fed Dubias/Crickets on the side and it will be fine. Feed same frog a diet of mice and fatty superworms, etc. and it's circulatory system and liver will suffer .

[Plovingood]

I agree with mentat. I don't believe a frog will eat till it explodes but will until it is full. As long as it is willingly taking food it's fine, it's just what we feed it that will make it over weight or not.
I used to feed a lot if mice to my frog and he did seem to get pretty fat. I changed his diet to night crawlers and crickets because I was concerned for my little guy and he actually seemed to lose some weight and just looked healthier overall.
Although they may not get a lot of food in the wild, they get a lot in captivity and they probably love it haha


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[Raya]

Alot of keepers of pacman and african bullfrogs feed them too much rodents. A pinky once a month is absolutely not needed for a good frog diet and I bet quite a few people feed more then that.
Stick to insects and they will be alot more healthy.

[WorldClassFrogCoddler]

I've found that trying to force the frog to eat when he doesn't want to it pointless, it stresses him out even worse, and he tries to escape, and could hurt himself, the worm may die needlessly if the frog won't eat it, etc.

So what I do is feed him a diet of crickets and european nightcrawlers, some days with multi-vitamin and calcium with d3, other times no dusting, other times only calcium. I've never fed him a rodent and probably would only do so once a year or less even. But I let him show me he's hungry. When he eats a good meal, he goes right under for days. He comes back up a week later when he's hungry. He doesn't act stressed, he eats quickly and without much fuss now... it's going well.

I bought him at petsmart and asked a woman how often they should eat, so said 'oh, you can feed them all the time. If you feed them a whole lot they will get really big really fast." I vowed to do the opposite of that, as it sounded like terrible advice. And my frog is pretty damn healthy looking now, if I do say so myself.

I agree with your sentiment. I gave up the idea of a rigid feeding schedule. I feed based on how the frog is behaving. He let's me know when he's ready to eat.

[GrifTheGreat]

I dont use a schedule.

I strongly disagree with you saying force feeding is pointless. Many a frogs life has been saved from force feeding. Knowing when it must be done is key. There are liquid critical care formulas readily available to use and they are easier to digest than live foods. No animal wants to be forced to eat, but if they will not eat on their own it must be done. It is never pointless and allowing the frog to starve to the point that it cannot feed itself even if it wanted too is foolish and irresponcible.

As a keeper it is our responcibility to do whatever is necessary to care for these animals. That includes force feeding when it calls for it.

[ICEMAN]

Not sure if anyone has seen my update thread yet, but I finally got him to take a worm. Please read that and give me your thoughts on my method...