Toad care?? Found a nice one for scenting

[infernalis]

Found this sitting off the front door step this morning.

http://www.danceswithreptiles.com/stuff/toad.jpg

Now my next big question, How do I give this toad the best possible captive experience??

After all the poor thing is going to have pinky mice rubbed on him from time to time, I want to make it as comfortable as possible for the toad to live in my reptile room.

Will it eat feeder crickets?

any care tips appreciated, Thanks.

[Aundrea]

Hey that looks like my toad Kermit lol :D

For mine any kind of bedding will do. Just give him enough so he can hide himself in. Mine eats wax worms, mealworms, flies, hornworms, silkworms, potato bugs, crickets, pretty much anything. Keep him warm either a light or a heating pad and a nice big bowl of water where he can hop right in and soak his whole body in :D

[ssssnakeluvr]

toads eat anything smaller than them that moves!!!!! very easy to keep.

[infernalis]

Great info, Thanks..

I am going to try scenting a pink with the toad and leave it with MoJo for a while right now....

I have all those big totes left over from when I bought 2 trips worth of aquariums at the petco sale, one of those should make a decent home.

time to feed the garters.....

[Zephyr]

From my extensive work with Bufo, you want to keep him VERY moist. As much as it's tempting to stereotype toads, these guys will thank you for the humidity.
Give him roughly a square foot of space, but like garters he will use up all of it if the humidity is high. Feed him crix, roaches, and other small arthropods daily. One a day will keep him at his best. I suggest sphagnum moss (not sphagnum peat moss, something entirely different) for bedding; you can make one side totally aquatic with bits of moss spread about and one side for land. The benefit to the moss is that you can clean it by wringing it out. For temps, if you want rapid growth and a very hearty appetite keep things about 80. Anything higher than this may kill him. For a decent appetite and slower growth (I recommend this; too much heat is stressful!) Keep him around 68-75. You won't need a temp gradient in the tank.
Hope this helps! You won't need much ventilation, maybe a few holes around the top of the tank.
**EDIT- This may sound REALLY fancy, but it'll help in the long run. These babies can live up to 20 years with proper care, and they really are neat!

[bsol]

get a mate for it and do some breeding... rear the tadpoles and sell us the toadlets!

[Snake lover 3-25]

OMG what a great idea!!!!!:eek:!!!!!!!

[kbear]

I've never had a toad but I've owned/bred/raised many, many, MANY frogs in past years. They were pretty simple, low maitenance (I can't spell). I never had to use a heating system and they never needed to be brumated. They ate pretty much anything, I fed them earthworms, mealworms, crickets. My neighbors and I used to play together as kids, and we had hundreds of little tadpoles that we would raise during the season. We used to find frog eggs in the gutter and hatch them. One time, we accidently injured a froglet. We smashed his leg up while we were digging a large hole in the dirt. We didn't see him and smushed him with the shovel. We couldn't see how he would survive in the wild, so we kept him. I amputated his leg with a pocket knife (it was the back one). I know that sounds terrible and cruel, but We did it because his leg was pulverized and we were just little kids who wanted to save him. Anyway, his amputation healed up fine. We put him in a very clean tank, and he was quite functional. I rather proudly (and most likely very mistakenly) fancied myself a frog doctor after that.
I had one frog for YEARS (lost count). He was just a little tree froglet when I someone gave him to me. They had caught him on their property. His name was Harvey:). Anyway, that frog got so fat and huge that he looked like a toad! If I remember, all I fed him was crickets, and they seemed to be fine, nutritionally. He never had any health issues. Occaisonally, he would shed his skin and eat the shed. I got the idea that he could control his sheds, because he always did it when I hadn't been able to get to the pet store for a while and he was super hungry.
For substrate I used those bark chips that you can get for amphibians or reptiles or whatever, and there was a little swimming pool made out of one of those dishes you put under plant pots to catch the water.
He had really random cage mates- a california newt named Newton, and my first red-eared slider named Myrtle the Turtle. Myrtle's a boy, but I didn't know that then because he was a baby. The only reason I could keep them together was because they weren't that different in size. Harvey used to sit on Myrtle's back like he was lounging on a couch.
Anyway, that was a really long pointless story. Your little toad brought back good memories. :)

[infernalis]

Thanks for that story, Appreciate the insight to your memories.

Decided that since none of my snakes require scenting I let the toad go while the weather was still permitting.

I feed enough of the babies and polliwogs to my snakes, I felt that the adult would serve better back in the breeding population.

Born to be wild:cool: