Best toad diet

[Malduroque]

No less an authority than the highly knowledgeable and experienced herpetologist Frank Indiviglio, who stresses variety, has stated that if you must feed them only one thing, let it be earthworms. For my three Bufo Viridis it's earthworms, crickets and slugs that form the bulk of their intake. I also throw in moths, earwigs, millipedes, sow bugs, one or two June bugs when they're in season. I also offer them commercial live food such as wax worms, Phoenix worms, butter worms and canned food to provide them grasshoppers, snails.

[victorsgrace]

Hey Malduroque, sounds interesting with the canned food. Do you mean canned food such as cat food or specialised canned food for toads?

And how do you feed the canned food? I've thought about giving my guys some meat very rarely, but I have difficulty in getting them interested in tong feeding with "not moving" items, such as cut-up earth worms if the ones I get hold of are too big for them.

[Malduroque]

I'm referring to the canned food put out by the likes of Fluker, ZooMed and Exo Terra. I usually get the grasshoppers or snails and even sometimes the river shrimp. Theses are not freeze dried, they actually seemed to be fairly moist and hence only last a couple of weeks even when refrigerated.

I usually just hold the "prey" with tongs and wiggle it in front of them either on the ground or in the air. They may need some conditioning for that as I've found that if I go without the canned food for an extended period it's more difficult to get them to "bite". One way I've used when they're a bit reluctant is to start them off with some live food to get the feeding response going and then followup with the canned items. Then again, sometimes the opposite works: when they're the most hungry, they can be more likely to take the canned food as their first item or two and then only show interest in live food. Just because these guys have tiny little brains doesn't mean they are completely predictable!

[victorsgrace]

Allright

Thanks for the reply. I'll try out that method. I've only seen dried mealworms as canned food here in DK, though.