Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Could you help me ID this toad? I believe it's an American toad.

Actually, judging by the number of warts in the dorsal blotches, it looks to me like you have a Bufo woodhousei, not americanus.

Brad Chambers

I guess I should have given you a little more info. It was caught in North Carolina, West of Charlotte. It eats great! Can any one send me to any care info, tell me how to sex it, and requirements to keep it?

Thanks,
Erich

See previous message.

first off sorry for being lame and taking 7 days to reply.
To clear up a bit of confusion now that you've given a locality, what you have is Fowler's Toad which used to be Bufo woodhousei fowleri but now most people are calling Bufo fowleri and Bufo woodhousei is a different species not technically found in North Carolina. BAH! The names are always being debated nearly whenever you want to know what anything is...

Toads can be difficult to sex but there are some things you can look for. If a toad is sexually mature, males tend to have a swollen thumb when compared to females. This might not help much unless you've looked at and compared males to females. If you pick up an adult male between your thumb and index finger and hold him behind the armpits that to him means that you are another male making a mistake and trying to breed with him. In this situation, he would give off a release call which is a violent vibrating with some chirps in there as well. If your toad does not do this then it is either a female or it just doesn't want to do it. Essentially, you might be able to prove it's a male or assume that it's probably a female.

Care isn't too hard. It will eat crickets or bits of nightcrawlers. Nightcrawlers are probably the easiest thing to care for since you can just buy some at a general store or bait shop and keep a container in your fridge. You will want to cut it up into something it can take down in a single bite which is probably going to be segments as long as the toad's head is wide. One or two pieces per feeding will be plenty and you would want to feed it two or three times a week. It might not eat immediately and you may need to try some different food items at first to get it used to eating in captivity. Crickets, as mentioned above, are nice because the have lots of moving parts to catch the toad's attention. I would try feeding with forceps or tweezers (or fingers) first before letting a couple go in the tank.

Leave a dish of water in tank that you know the toad can get into and out of easily. You don't want it to be as deep as the toad is tall -- just and inch or a little more is plenty. Soil is a nice substrate because toads are diggers and will want to make little holes to get snug in from time to time and it's easy to keep moist. A plant or two never hurts as well as something the toad can hide under (like a plant pot broken lenghwise to make a little cave). You will want to remove any feces you find and change the soil every couple weeks to avoid sanitary issues. A lot of what I'm saying is just rule of thumb material. If you have a really small toad then quantities and frequencies will be different from those of a toad that's the size of a baseball and there is even variation among individuals of the same size. Water should be changed regularly and you should mist the tank with a squirt bottle a couple times a day. You will want to use dechlorinated water for the misting and the water dish -- if you just fill a containter up with tap water and let it stand overnight then it's pretty much dechlorinated.

Hope that helps!

I was sure someone would answer eventally. I have him in a 10 gallon tank right now, is that large enough for a single toad? He is farly large already, so if he needs a larger tank, I may be able to aquire a 20H for him. I already have a shallow water dish in the tank that he sits in almost constantly, and a hide "cave" that he has started ambushing his crickets out of (I love to watch him eat). I made a screen top for the tank to provide some ventalation. I keep anoles, so I'm already buying and keeping crickets for them. Does his crickets need dusted with calcium? As far as lighting goes, I have an old floresent fish light ove the tank now. Do they need UVA and UVB? What about a bulb for basking? And I have been using plain white paper towls on the bottom of the tank.

Thanks for your help!
Erich

The largest difference between keeping this guy and the anoles does come down to heat and light. The toad does not need to bask so you don't need a heat lamp and while a UV light wouldn't hurt anything (that I'm aware of), they don't need that either. Toad's are mostly nocternal in the wild so they don't normally encounter much natural sunlight on a night to night basis and have adapted accordingly. Most toads that people find in the day are found because their hiding places were disturbed.
What you use for a substrate is really up to you -- paper towels have the advantage of being very easy to clean and you can keep them slightly moist without a problem. One thing to be aware of is that toads have a capillary bed between their hind legs (that reddish patch of loose skin). It's how they "drink". Toad usually try to find a pool of water to sit in and they absorb their water through this capilly bed. It's why your toad sits in the water dish so much. When they are picked up they often "pee" on you but it's actually just their reserve of absorbed water. Anyway, the point is that water can diffuse out of the capillary bed as well so whatever the substrate is, it should not be bone dry. I like soil because of the natural look.

10 gallons should be fine for your average Fowler's. How long is it exactly?

Also, nice to hear that it's eating readily. With any wild caught animal it's hard to predict if they will eat at first or pretend they have no interest in food at all. The stuff in my last post about trying different foods and forceps was under the assumption that your new arrival would be one of the hard cases (which is what I usually get dealing with snakes). It would be best if you at least dust the crickets every other feeding but doing it every time is even better.