What to feed American Toads?

[Summer]

I am lost when it comes to this. Is there anything I can catch in my backyard and feed to the Toads? I have tried moths but only the larger ones eat them and this is only sometimes.
So, what do they like to eat?

Thank you.
P.S. Especially for the smaller ones!

[Lacibeth]

Crickets. The one here at work loves nightcrawlers but won't have anything to do with red wrigglers. Go figure. We also feed darkling beetle larva (mealworms) from our culture.

Anything "wild-caught" you want to make sure hasn't been exposed to pesticides.

How small are the smaller ones?

[Froog]

Crickets is what they will most likely eat. Or sometimes (if you live in the mountains or somewhere with trees) they will eat silk worms.

[globug]

I'm new here and have had every pet under the sun except a frog. So now I have a Mongolian Toad. I think meal worms for me are the easiest as I had them years ago for many other fish and lizards. You can raise them easily and when they turn into larva and beetles you can still continue to feed to your frog. For me here in China I can easily buy meal worms but to find a place which sells crickets is a little harder. Also if you try and keep them for longer periods of time you might have some escaping and chirping in your home, h ah aha. Crickets would be best but I guess it depends on whether you can easily get them and care for them.

[kueluck]

I feed mine Turkish roaches, crickets, butter worms & earth worms.

[MatthewM1]

I feed my little guy; crickets, dubia, pacman frog food, can-o-snails, every once and a while mealworms. Lateralis roaches once my ooths start hatching. Once the he gets a little bigger adding nightcrawlers & hisser nymphs and occasional superworms and pinkies, probably going to get either horn worms or silk worms in the spring as well, maybe both.


The more variety the better.
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[kueluck]

Never seen an American toad stalk a pinkie, just does not seem natural. IMO stick with bugs & worms.

I feed my little guy; crickets, dubia, pacman frog food, can-o-snails, every once and a while mealworms. Lateralis roaches once my ooths start hatching. Once the he gets a little bigger adding nightcrawlers & hisser nymphs and occasional superworms and pinkies, probably going to get either horn worms or silk worms in the spring as well, maybe both.


The more variety the better.
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[MatthewM1]

I'm sure that in the wild it is a rarity. But living on a limited diet isn't natural either and I believe that if used sparingly they make a good additional food source for our larger amphibians.

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[Heatheranne]

Yes, pinkies should only be used as a rare treat and are not healthy for them. They are also harder to digest than insects and worms. Other frogs such as pacman frogs eat larger prey in the wild and have been conditioned to tolerate tougher foods. Think, what do they eat in the wild....bugs and worms . I'd avoid the pinkies all together for toads...you're just asking for health problems and likely an impaction risk.

Be careful on the mealworms also. Rare ones as treats are fine, but the chitin in their shells passes through undigested and can cause constipation and intestinal impaction, and may lead to rectal prolapse...not a good diagnosis to have to treat, and it's sometimes not curable. Think of what happens when you continue to eat lots of popcorn day after day. It's similar to that.

Crickets, earthworms, night crawlers, freshly molted roaches, wax worms are fine but are fatty and not really healthy for them, wax worm moths, occasional hornworm treats (but do not feed the hornworms tomatoes or tomato plants because the derivatives from the plants/tomatoes are toxic to frogs) -you can order safe ones from Great Lakes hornworms.

Good staple foods are worms, crickets and roaches. Gut-load your insects too .

[kueluck]

Yup, what she ^ said.

[MatthewM1]

I only give meal worms about 1-2x a month. I actually read something writin by the forums founder Jon a while back if I remember correctly. Stating that in well varied diet mealworms were acceptable and were only the impaction risk everyone makes them out to be if fed regularly and often. I never used mealworms prior to reading that, but have been here and there since and he's a pooping machine. I keep the mealworm colony mainly for my smaller spiders.

And as for the pinkies I only intend to give 1 maybe 2 a year, not bimonthly like my pac. I guess I should have been a little more specific on frequencies.

And of course I always gut load

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[kueluck]

I would still stay away from the pinkies. And your toads like the can-o-snails? I was thinking about trying them.

[MatthewM1]

Yeah he seemed to enjoy it. He really goes nuts over the pacman frog food. I've been offering that 1 day a week the past 3 weeks or so and I've seen an explosion in growth since I added that to his diet. Might just be a coincidence tho

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[kueluck]

I tried the pac food, only one will take it, the others look at me like I'm crazy trying to pass that off as food.

[demon amphibians]

what i have learned is that toads love small prey that move a lot. crickets meet this criteria but i have had nothing but bad luck with them. what i mean by bad luck is pin worms. And the career's come from places such as petco, LLL reptile and other very well known places in my area. each in which get there crickets from diverse breeders. So i had a good friend of mine send me 20,000 lateralis or other known as turkistan roaches or red runners. they are cricket size and breed like you wouldnt believe. above all my toads love them the most. and they are the most nutritional source of food i can get them to eat. although i have a different species my cane toads are quite similar to your toads as far as diet is concerned. diversity is a must. Dubia are very good and except-able but they tend to not move to much and earth worms tend to burrow faster then the toads can notice them. small mice are good once a month but my toads dont always go after them. As a staple i suggest Lateralis over anything because they have 12 times the nutritional value as crickets and they draw much attention to themselves.