While mowing the lawn, I happened to catch two little tiny toads…they are about the size of the last section of my index finger (I am an adult man of average size and build). My kids like to watch them and pet them and stuff.
However, they have been at their grandma’s house for a couple days, and I figured the toads might be getting hungry and thirsty, so I wanted to feed them. I put a shallow dish of water in there for drinking, and I bought some small crickets from the pet store to feed them. Unfortunately, the small crickets are easily 50% of the length of the toads, and the toads do not seem inclined to try to eat them.
So, how can I feed these little guys? If you siggest some smaller bugs, some tips for how to catch them may be in order.
I don’t think you should take care of these toads - you should probably buy some - but you could try those little tiny flies that they breed flightless - I forget what they are called. Just be sure they don’t escape.
My SO’s brother used to have those bright blue ones - I’m thoroughly blanking on the names now. Poison dart frogs! That’s it. He fed them on flightless fruit flies. You just release a bunch into an enclosed environment and let them go to it.
I dont know why, but this post has put me in a great mood----taking the time out of your yardwork to show your little ones these little toads, then inquiring about thier care and feeding; for some reason this strikes me as a very caring, tender thing to do…
Half-dead swatted flies.
Mosquito larvae.
Really small earthworms.
Aquarium fish food. (Hold the food in front of them underwater and wiggle it to induce them to feed.) Mealworms (link from Google - has other live feeder insects as well).
Maybe get some dried tubifex worms from the pet store, soak them in some water then feed to the toads… That way you don’t have to run around catching live critters.
30 bucks for a small tube of flies? that’s crazy! Thanks for the link, but I am going to try a couple other things as well. so far no one I have called sells pinhead crickets, but they do have mealworms, and I’m going to try those.
Oh, I thought you had pinheads. Generally Petsmart or Petco has them. I am surprised the flies are so expensive, too. I pay less than $5 for something like 100 mealworms. But I don’t get the tiny ones, my gecko is too big for the real little ones.
You can try the dried ones but I don’t know if they’ll go for them. You may have to wriggle them to make them look alive. I hand-feed our gecko and he takes it, but he won’t take it if it’s just laying there.
Reptiles & amphibians can be tough to feed sometimes - they sometimes get picky and they’re very, very stupid. Good luck either way.
Thank you very much! The kids are 6 and 2, and are at that stage where everything is interesting and wonderful. The challenge is keeping them from putting their hands in their mouth right after playing with toads
Usually, I make them release the toads into the wild after a day or so, because I don’t want to keep toads around. But this time, they have been away for a bit, and I worry that the poor little toads will die…I don’t want dead toads!
What the…how odd. I mean, where I go, they have just these giant bins of crickets; pinheads, regular size, and DEAR GOD WHAT IS THAT THING.
The other thing you could do is go to the store and they have these feeder boxes of crickets. There’s like 25 in a box. Then you go home and empty them into a plastic bin and look for the tiniest ones, and then put just those tiny ones into the container.
How to transfer them? Use a really fat straw and “pour” them into one end of the straw, making sure the other end is in the froggie container.
A friend took in about 30 toadlets, each small enough to fit on my pinky nail. He fed them tubes of flightless fruitflies and lovingly looked after humidity and temperature. In a few weeks, they were all dead anyway. Hope you have better luck.
When I raised tiny toads from tadpoles, I was faced with the same problem. Three solutions:
1.) You can catch tiny moths and the like and let the toads eat them
2.) You can buy mealworms at your local pet store. If the mealworms are too big (as they were in my case), I found that I could cutoff the front section, which would continue to move, and the toad would eat that.
You can take something that’s dead and move it by hand, or on a string or a stick, to give it the illusion of life and make it appealing to a toad. no joke.
Well I got home today and both my little toadies were dead. The crickets were climbing all over them and they were dark and stiff as … well, as a dead toad.
And I had found some fruit flies and brought them home, too.
The kids were disappointed, so we did a toad hunt, and found another small guy. He’s now in the bin with some water and several fruit flies. I hope he eats and drinks and doesn’t die like the other ones did.
As an aside, WTF is with the pet store? I told them I needed somethign smaller than their small crickets, and they were all like “no, we don’t have anything smaller” and then I went to the store and asked, and they said “no, we don’t have anything smaler” so I checked out the mealworms, and they were too big. And then she says “we do have flightless fruit flies” which I look at and they are about 1/10 the size of the @#$% crickets. WTF? Yes, I’ll take some, thanks.
You can teach your kids a great lesson about respecting life, nature, and conservation by letting them go. Im not surprised to hear one has died already. These are not good animals for pets. Get a dog or a cat if you need a pet.
And if these toads die too, I do hope you’ll reconsider your toad murder spree! (;)) I kid, but toads & frogs as I said are kind of hard to take care of. You need the right kind of tank, with a good surrounding of “wilderness” and water and all that. Good luck though - maybe they’ll eat, maybe they won’t.
Maybe you could consider getting a small aquarium with an African Dwarf frog or two? They will eat frozen foods (bloodworms and such) instead of requiring live bugs. Probably much easier to care for than toads from your backyard.
It’s too late for your little toads, but if you decide to try this again, you can buy or make a sweep net. This is a net with a handle that you can drag along your grass. It’s amazing how many leafhoppers and other bugs are in the grass and end up in the net. The net material should be similar to nylon window screen. You can shake out the bugs into a coffee can or a jar.
I used to feed poison dart frogs this way during the warmer months. I bred crickets and fruit flies the rest of the year.
