Nutritional Supplementation for Toads?

[John]

Interesting stuff Bruce, thank you. What do you think of calcium enriched gutloading diets?

[SludgeMunkey]

Outstanding information everyone, Thank you!

I utilize Rep-Cal Herptevite + ß carotene in my cricket diet. I have a habit of not dusting as my experience with reptiles, specifically old world chameleons, has led me to believe there is a link between dusting and respiratory issues. I had read of this in a book years ago, but my usual paranoia concerning my critters got me out of the habit. I use mix of Ghann's cricket diet, Herptevite and Gerber vegetable medley to feed and water my crickets.

The results with caudates and tree frogs have been stunning, but I was unsure of toads, especially adults.

[Jace]

Wow-I think I just received an F in Gutloading 101. I thought tossing in some fish flakes was sufficient, but I'm thinking I might have to boost it up a bit. Some great tips and advice.....excuse me, I hear my crickets calling......

[John]

Well, frog and toad tadpoles grow well on fish food - I use it all the time. Therefore it makes sense to me that if a cricket contains it then an adult frog will get decent nutritional benefit from it.

[SludgeMunkey]

I use fish flakes to gutload my worms and roaches. I have used them in the past for crickets also.

This is one of my back up items I always keep on hand. Not being able to drive can sometimes be an issue when buying large amounts of baby food.

I also use Science Diet dog food for my crickets. In fact I use that as a staple for them, and feed my mad scientist mix only 24 hours prior to feeding time.

[Ebony]

Oh wow! Ive never heard of this. I have to say that Ive never dusted my Frog food with anything. Should I be? My oldest Frogs are 5 years old.
I feed them a huge variety (Locusts,Mealworms,Flys,Katidids,Slaters,Ants,Moth s,and fruit flies) I breed the Locusts and the mealworms and every thing else I catch.

[Herpvet]

Interesting stuff Bruce, thank you. What do you think of calcium enriched gutloading diets?

Hi John,

If they're good, they help. Unfortunately, as I mentioned, several studies suggest that many products for pets have no data to back up their use, and make claims with no evidence whatsoever. They even often do not even contain anything like what they're supposed to - amongst others, a paper in the Journal of Herpetological Medicine and Surgery found only one out of 4 diets actually helped the calcium levels of the crickets significantly, and one specific finding was that one of the diets (tested on several batches) only had 16.7% (roughly 1/6) of the container stated "minimum guaranteed" level of calcium!

Note that this was a purely isolated study - i.e. only looking at the crickets, not any effects of feeding, which might not correlate with a "real life" situation, but if the loading diet can't even raise the calcium level in the crickets above control levels it isn't likely to do much good.

For those interested, the diets in that paper were T-rex calcium plus food (the one that helped), ESU diet gut load, Jurassi pets gut load and Fluker high calcium cricket food.

So the answer is, unfortunately, you have to research which one(s) have some evidence to support their claims (or make your own - some formulae are available). But that takes effort which many poeple won't do unfortunately, hence sales of these supplements.

I'm not by any means saying they're all useless - but there appears to be very little control of these things.

Hope this helps, even if it doesn't give a neat answer unfortunately!

Bruce.