Hi,
I was wondering how you guys vary your gray tree frogs' diets. I'd like to find something to supplement mine's cricket diet. I don't believe my local petshop carries silk / wax worms and all the soft-bodied invertebrates they do carry are as big as my frog...
I tried feeding her bits of nightcrawlers even though they probably rarely encounter them in the wild but she just looks at them like... well, like something weird she hasn't seen before.
This may take awhile, but you could get a few insects frog the outdoors that are not poisonous and the are about the right size, then breed them for a few generations and feed those offspring. They should then be frog safe. Another option, if your frog was wild caught in the first place, is just get insects from outside if you can be sure that there are no pesticides used in the area
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Grays basically eat anything, well most of the time anyway, so that shouldn't be too difficult. They really seem to enjoy hunting moths, woodlice have calcium, earthworms have tons of protein and presumably vitamins and such from their soil diet. One winter, back before I started breeding roaches, I ran out of feeder insects. But my grays were heavily conditioned from hand feeding, so I successfully kept them fed for two weeks by offering them blobs of thawed frozen bloodworms on my fingertips.
I don't foresee being able to breed my own feeders in the near future, although free feeders would be awesome.
I found silk worms at my local petshop. Would a diet of crickets and silk worms be varied enough? (I supplement with calcium that contains D3 once a week.)... crickets would probably remain the staple, for the time being, since the silk worms are a lot more expensive...
Maybe I can get her to eat nightcrawler bits if I get her used to hand feeding with the silk worms...
I have a Butterfly Net that I run across the grass in the back yard. I scoop up hundreds of newborn insects in early Spring, they won't pose a biting problem. Even the grasshoppers are small and I'm not worried about the occasional baby grass spider I might pick up. The Grays gobble them all up. Down side with the spiders is that I think they are eating my Springtails. Don't feed Butterflies -somewhat toxic. You might find a net full of the tiniest black beetles the frogs will relish as they hunt them through the night.
I feed my Greys silkworms along with Turkish Runners. wild caught moths and sometimes store bought Banded Crickets. The Silkworms are expensive and messy so I've switched to Butterworms which are incredibly easy to keep but like moths, too fattening. The Veterinarian warned me the moths carry parasites but I've had no problems with my Greys over the past 6 years. I feed them the moths about once maybe twice a week in the Spring and throughout the Summer, alternating with Turks, outdoor insects.
I could swear my Greys tap their fat little toe pads in excited expectation when I approach the viv with my captured winged trophies.
Last edited by Treesniffer; May 7th, 2016 at 11:45 PM. Reason: spelling error
It's not a good idea to generalize broad categories of insects as safe or toxic. There are non- toxic butterflies and toxic grasshoppers and moths. It's better to look at the characteristics of the individual insect species- if it's slow moving, unafraid, conspicuous, brightly colored, or occurs in large groups, you can bet it's poisonous. If it's well camouflaged or otherwise cryptic, or it's fast, skittish and hard to catch, it's probably safe. If you make a mistake, since grays co- evolved with all the insects in their environment, there's a good chance they'll have some immunity to the toxin or at least know better than to eat it- but better safe than sorry, especially with all the invasive species these days.
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