Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Here is the story, I bought a sonoran desert toad form a dealer who was keeping the toads in an outside cage. He noticed that one turned up missing and thought a hawk had picked it up and it was gone. It had actualy gone back in to estavation for the second time in the year once in august and again in may, but he didnt know that until a huricane came through and it came up out of the ground. Of course It had now lost alot of weight and to the dealers credit he informed me of that. When I got it it was eating, but not putting on weight very fast. It is now come to the point that I am force feeding it. I have been giving it pinkies but it has been having trouble digesting them. they are comming out as basicly liquified pinkies, still pink in color. Im making an appt. with the vet next week because I assume part of the problem may be parsite infestation. I am now feeding it cat food with vitimins but I want to know if there is something else I should be feeding it that will put the weight on faster. It would need to be something high in protien and easy to digest maybe some sort of cocktal mixture that someone can recomend? I dont see any worms in its fecies but I cant think of any other reason why it isn't gaining the weight. my other colorado river toad is very healthy and passes solid waste like it should but this one is passing stools as diareha. I feed it once every day or every other day but nothing seems to be working very fast. It has gained some weight but not as fast as I would expect. sorry for droning on any help or advice would be nice. thanks

I had a toad with similar problems, not eating, very lethargic. It was some kind of bacteria infection. But not red leg. Vet gave me a special canned cat food that was very liquidy to inject down her throat with a big needless syringe. I still have the cat food can if I need it again, can't remember the name of it off the top of my head. Hope this helps.

no Im positive that they are mites. I know exactly what springtails look like. These mites gather in clumps on the toads and on any dead cricket in the cage. I seem to bother the toads because one of them sits in the water bowl, to get away from them I assume. I wonder if they are comming in with the crickets. They are not baby crickets either. I emptied out all the bedding and cleaned the cage again and put carpet in it. I dont like keeping my toads on carpet but I dont think the mites can survive on the dry carpet. I, like my toads am getting realy annoyed about this infestation.

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2 lined geckos
2 crested geckos
2 tokay geckos
1 golden gecko
1 moorish gecko
2 occelated skinks
2 irian jaya blue tongues
2 colorado river toads
1 bearded dragon
2 uromastix
2 yellow rat snakes
1 everglades rat snake
1 red rat snake
1 electric eel
1 three toed box turtle
1 eastern box turtle
2 northern copperhead
1 pigmy rattlesnake
3 oscars
1 texas chiclid
lots of catfish

with my bufo alvarius, i only give pinkies once or twice a month, try some crickets and see how that goes...also do you have a good dish for him to soak (cleaned daily) in and is the temp good b/c there may be some stress factor coming into play...try to see what the dealer was feeding him and if that worked...force feeding is really a risky proposition so anything that would circumvent that is good...on a side note, does anyone have any idea how to sex these guys outside of hearing them croak...from my understanding, the males do not have a gray throat like with most toads and size is so relative that it is hardly a precise science, is there anything like nuptial pads or some kind of gland that anyone knows about?

Here's a way to sex bufo alvarius. You have to ring them around the belly, and pick the toad up. To cause the reaction one usually has to rotate the toad around to face his/herself. (so the toad sees you)

The females will puff themselves up doubling the size of their whole torsoe. The males won't puff up and will often croak at you. This works because the male and female alvarius have unique defense reactions, so we sex them by checking what they are. If you don't get a positive reaction the first time, try again a little later.

Of course they're likely to urinate as a reaction during this, so watch out.

interesting, is that true of only adults, or juveniles, too?

It does work for juveniles, how young I'm not sure. It worked for my alvarius which were under 3" from snout to rump, how young that is I don't know, but's it's juvenile size for alvarius.