This is Wilbur.

  He's the smallest and, as I mentioned before, doesn't like it when the others sit on him....Probably because they're bigger than he is!  He's quite vocal about it.  Yells at them forever until I put on a bouncer shirt and remove the offending toad from his back!

This is Herman.

  She's in the middle based on size but she always looks the best!!  I would say that she is the one with the most "fashion sense" around here and that includes me....now, where did I put my steel toed boots?

This is Bubba.

  She's the biggest!  She wasn't always this big but with plenty of time and pampering you can have a pet toad like her!  I LOVE to show her off to visitors.  She just loves to EAT!!!

Toads are very easy pets to keep and maintain.

 All of my toads have been found in the wild.  I have done some research about my pets and have come to the conclusion that they are either bufo americanus "American Toad" or bufo woodhousii "Woodhouse's Toad".  My research is based upon their exterior appearances and I would not like to class them as something that they aren't but I'm no expert and I do not claim to be.  I only have done research in order to provide proper habitat for my little buddies.  But, since I found them here in the good old U.S. of A., I'm calling them "American Toads"!

At one point in time, we had a total of 9 toads of varying sizes but we ended up giving some away because they were costing more to feed than the dog!  Through research, well, more appropriately, while chaperoning a field trip with my son's class to ZooAmerica in Hershey, Pennsylvania we discovered that finding and keeping animals in the wild will introduce them to human and domestic pet germs and you should not release them back into the wild to spread these germs.  So, when it was decided that we could not keep 9 toads, we opted to give some away. 

I was sad to see them go because when the little ones ate the fireflies you could see the fireflies lighting up inside the small toads before they passed on (the fireflies, not the toads....I'm full of them tonight, aren't I?  LOL).  It was super cool to point out toad anatomy to my kids in the few seconds I had between firefly flashes!!

Toads are fabulous to keep as pets!

They don't have fur to shed, although they do shed!

  When they do shed their skin they begin to look a little bit darker than normal.  See Wilbur in the pictures?  He'll be shedding in a few days.  Generally, their skin starts to shed from their back ends to the front.  The toads will use their feet to help the process along.  Using their back feet they force the older skin towards their mouths and then they actually consume their shed skin.  This action helps to remove the skin from the back to the front so I rarely find any skins in the tank unless they're in their pool when they shed and I've only found a partial skin there at times.

They don't bark or meow!

  But the males will chirp when sat upon or during mating season.  
It doesn't matter what time of year it is, if someone decides to sit on Wilbur I know about it in a few minutes! 

The don't piddle on the carpet!!!

What else can I say about that?  *Giggles!*

Oh, and there's no litter box to clean out, either!!!

Their toys don't cost a fortune!!!

Again, what else can I say about that?  
They don't chew on vinyl toys or rawhide treats.
Hey, wait!  I don't NEED to buy toys for them!  
They're easily amused merely by feeding them fireflies!  
No, wait, us humans are easily amused when they eat the lighting bugs!

They are easy to feed! 

 All I do is pop in at the pet store every week and buy a few dozen crickets, sized EXTRA LARGE for my extra large Toads!  In the summer time I send the kids out with butterfly nets and plastic tanks at dusk to catch HUNDREDS of fireflies in order to save on the cost of crickets.  I offer the kids 2 cents for each firefly that is caught.  Crickets at the pet store are 12 cents each and this really helps keep down on feeding costs.  The kids have a blast trying to catch more bugs than their friends and they make a little bit of money while they're doing it, too!  (Hey, a hundred fireflies is $2 for a little kid! And what fun to catch them, too!)  

We also catch the locusts, grasshoppers, wild crickets (which are actually different than the crickets you get at the pet stores because they have an exoskeleton and are harder for the toads to digest), moths that get in and fly around, spiders when I can get the nerve up to catch them, and WORMS!  They LOVE worms!!  As a treat I'll go to the bait store and buy a dozen worms.  I keep them in the fridge and give them one or two at a time.  Usually only Bubba gets one and Herman the other, but it's a variety in diet and I'm not keeping a 50 pound bag of dog food around, either!

I have gotten many emails asking me how many crickets to feed to pet toads.  It really depends on the size of your toads and how much room you have to keep crickets around.  I have a pretty small place and I don't really want to be bothered with keeping the crickets separately from the toads as many pet owners will do.  The toad "purists" recommend keeping the crickets in a separate cage and feeding just a few crickets per toad per day.  However, I've found that by keeping PLENTY of hiding spaces in the aquarium I can dump in several dozen crickets and they'll last through the week.

Also, as they do drink through their skin I'm sure to provide them with plenty of water and they now have a very nice, natural looking pool in which to hang out.

Reproduction

Well, that only happens once a year, thankfully!  I don't have to worry about the mongrel down the street hanging around waiting for any of my pets to come out and play!

Generally, when it's that time of year, you will first notice the male has started to chirp (or sing) a lot.  He is trying to woo the females into choosing him as his mate.  In the wild, there are lots of males to choose from, but here at home there's one male and two females!  Also, female toads grow bigger than males toads.

Eventually, you will see the male clamped onto the female's back with his front legs. This process is called amplexus.  He will hang on for DAYS!!  (C'mon, ladies, when I first saw Wilbur doing this last year all I could think was, "Get off my  BACK!  I WEIGH ENOUGH AS IT IS AND I DON'T NEED TO CARRY YOU AROUND, TOO!")  

The process that follows is that the female will lay strings of eggs in a water source, such as a puddle or the edge of a pond and the male will fertilize the eggs while attached to her back.  When the process is complete you will be able to see the strings of eggs in the water source.

Last year when this happened we were not prepared in regards to the water source.  This year, we've got extra water "ponds" and I dug another aquarium out of storage to keep the eggs in while they mature into toads.  I've also got a heating source for them....believe it or not, it's a recycled baby wipe warmer that I've laid out flat underneath the aquarium!  I'm sure that you could use one of those little electric pads, too, for the same purpose.

  We want to keep the babies separated from the adults so that the bigger toads don't think that they are snacks and eat them up.

Finally, Cleaning the Tank

Well, all I can say is that the bigger the toad, the bigger the mess he/she will make.  Fortunately, it is quite easy to keep up after them.  I put the toads in a 5 gallon bucket (because Bubba's big enough to jump out of smaller ones) and scoop out a quantity of "used" substrate then I add an equal amount to even things up a bit.  I checked with my local pet store and they have also agreed that this method should be just fine to keep my toads safe and healthy.  

Setting Up an Aquarium for Toads

Since I've had an issue with the toads digging up drainage gravel I've been rethinking my aquarium design.  The new plan is to put down a layer of gravel, marbles, and/or landscape rocks.   Whatever you have will work so long as it's clean and free of soaps/detergents/bleach or anything that might be harmful to the toads.  There are products you can purchase in your local pet store that will assist in the removal of soaps and detergents for your aquarium products.  On top of this layer I'm going to place plastic canvas (you can find it in craft stores) cut to fit the aquarium and I'm going to use plastic lacing (sometimes called "gimp") to connect pieces, if needed.  This should help to keep the toads from digging up the drainage layer and mixing it with the potting soil.  On top of the plastic canvas I'm going to dump in the potting soil.  Be sure to choose sterile soil that does not contain plant foods (like Miracle Grow Potting Soil) which might be harmful to your pet toads.  Finally, be sure that you've got a nice pool for them to party in and some items under which they can hide.  I've got a small flower pot from my spring flowers and a small half log that I found at the pet store.  When I get the new aquarium finished I'm going to use half of a clay pot that broke this past summer because it will also absorb water and keep them moist.  Hopefully, I can get it to grow moss and make it look even more authentic to their natural terrain.  I used to have a nice "Button Fern" (I couldn't resist buying it just for the name) but it died like most of the plants that I try to keep!  I think I've got a "black thumb" when it comes to houseplants!  Either that, or the toads disturbed the roots so much that it couldn't possibly survive.  Yeah, that's the excuse I'm going to use!!

The new DIGS for the Toads!!!

Sorry folks, had to get a new PC a few months back and then had some problems getting my website onto it from the World Wide Web!  (I'm not an idiot, I've done it before but not with this new OS...um...that's an Operating System!!)  I finally got that all figured out but had problems getting the new websites published back OUT to the World Wide Web!  Finally, I got all of the bugs worked out and I'm back in business!

Here are some photos of the successful remodeling project of my Toad Tank!!

Isn't this a lovely shot of Herman (foreground) and Wilbur (background)?  They are both resting upon a new hiding location found at a local pet store!  They sell cork bark by the ounce...it's fabulous!  There's a huge pile of it there and you can pick out the sizes you need or, if they don't have what you need, they let you break up the bigger chunks into smaller pieces to suit your needs!  The hiding spot beside Wilbur is one that we've had for a while.  I purchased it at a BIG CHAIN pet store and they are not as fun to shop at as my little local pet store!!!  

Wanna know who is my local friendly pet store? 
 Here's their website!!!  www.daveszoo.com.
I love customer service and that's what they are all about!
And, no, that's not a plug for them, I just like them there and
I hope they're not mad at me now and won't sell me crickets for my toads!!

Okay, so, back to my habitat!!

Here's a side view of it.  It's not a good shot because my camera stinks.
But I suppose it's good enough to describe my habitat!

You can see that my aquarium is sitting on a doily...hey, the "girl" comes out in me every now and then so cut me a break!  I threw in some assorted gravel from the garden center at my local Wal-Mart.  It was cheaper than aquarium gravel from the pet store.  I was sure to wash it very carefully several times before I put it in the tank and I rinsed it repeatedly.  Don't want any soap residues, etc., in there to harm my toads.  On top of that you can see a thin layer of "WHAT?"  Well, I got that from the craft department at Wal-Mart.  It's just a large piece of plastic canvas!!  I measured the interior dimensions of the aquarium and cut this plastic canvas to fit inside.  I put that in there to keep the toads from spreading my drainage layer throughout the substrate like they had done with the original habitat.  On top of that I have a substrate recommended by the friendly folks at my local pet store that you have to soak in a pail for an hour before you can use it.

Anyhow....I've got gravel, plastic canvas, coconut stuff substrate......some hiding places as well as mossy stuff on top (sphagnum moss from the craft store) and big pools for them to hang out in.

I hope that this was enough information to help you with your own toad-quarium!!  Feel free to forward questions and comments to igotbuttons@att.net.  I appreciate any information and feedback I can get and strive to provide an accurate website for the enjoyment of everyone & the welfare of their toad pets.

     
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