Domestic or wild crickets

[BJnMe]

Is it better to get pet store crickets or wild caught, and why.

[John]

Not wild - wild carry internal parasites (if you collect 100 crickets, most will have parasites) and these can be communicated to your frogs.

[Tom Highum]

yup definitely never use wild caught anything as food.

[John]

Well, that's not really true - to the best of my knowledge, earthworms do not have any communicable parasites for frogs/toads. Earthworms have their own parasites though, just not ones that can be passed on to carnivores.

[Tom Highum]

hmm i heard that fish are bad too.

[BJnMe]

I am only saying this for arguments sake so don't take it any other way.

I have a wild caught Grey tree frog, it has been eating wild crickets(etc) all it's life.

So because it now lives in an aquarium that same diet is bad for it?

[SludgeMunkey]

yup definitely never use wild caught anything as food.

According to Frank Indiviglio, wild caught invertebrates are perfectly suitable for many captive animals.

While I do not fully agree with this personally, in the US earthworms, slugs, and snails are fair game, if collected from pesticide free locations and away from roads and airports. Many beetles are fair game too. Woodlice are also another option, as are springtails.

As for crickets, I only feed wild caught crickets and grasshoppers to my WC specimens that I got locally. Even then, they are only fed wild caught until winter hits, at which time they get treated for parasites. Once treatment starts, I only feed them farm raised or self cultured foods.

Honestly though, wild caught foods are a ton of work, and frankly I am willing to pay a few dollars to get large amounts. To feed my zoo wild caught foods would require me to forage about 8 hours a day...LOL