Reptile & Amphibian Forums

good news my cane toad arrived safe and healthy! but i have one question. i heard cane toads like to eat dog food. is this true and is it safe to feed mine dog food.

cane toads are omniverous and I have heard of wild ones sitting in outdoor pet dishes eating dog/cat food. That being said, though, I would not recommend it. There is oftend a very large difference between what an animal should eat and what an animal will eat. It just doesn't seem like something that can possibly be good for the animals...

If anybody knows otherwise please jump in and say so

hmmm

from pollywog.co.uk:

"Feeding: Juvenile Toads should be fed daily with a mixture of suitably sized insects including crickets and mealworms. The food items should be dusted with a calcium and vitamin supplement two-three times a week. Adult Toads should be fed every two-three days with a mixture of adult crickets, giant mealworms, earthworms, flour beetles, waxworms, adult locusts, pinkie mice, fish, and may even be trained to take inanimate foods such as lean raw steak, and cat / dog food. The food items should be dusted with a calcium and vitamin supplement once a week."

It seems to me that while you can feed it dog/cat food, it should only make up a small part of the diet (according to this one source anyway). I'd focus it's eating mostly on crickets and nightcrawlers. If you ever do decide to give it some cat/dog food, make sure it's the good stuff -- check the ingredient list, MEAT of some sort should be the first ingredient. If the first ingredient is corn meal or some sort of meat byproduct then it's probably not something you want entering your toad's system. Actually, you shouldn't even feed it to a cat or dog...

Anyway, still waiting on input from someone who has raised cane toads. Despite it being an option, I would still tend to think it's a bad idea...

i tried the dogfood thing-it didn't work. i feed mine large crickets, fuzzy mice, nightcrawlers, and the occasional discoid roach. substrate deep enough to burrow in and an object to hide under are a must. good luck

Mine would not eat dog food either, and it stinks up the housing too. I have read before that dog food contains too much fat for it to be a good regular food item. Crickets, crawlers, mealworms are your best bet. Mine would take pinky mice and raw chicken as a treat. But in general cane toads are ready feeders, so you should be okay. If he's not eating at all make really sure he has deep substrate for burrowing as well as a hide box. At first my cane toads would not eat with me in the room, they were that skittish, but soon enough they settled down and devoured everything in their path except toe dog food.

no, they probably wouln't even eat it cause it's not living. dont' feed it dog food.
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RES
WTF
FBT
Russian Tortoise
Hingeback tortoise
Leos
Lawsons Dragon
Aussi
Ocelot Gecko
Oregon Newt
Japanese FBN
American Bullfrog
0.0.4 D. tinctorius
D. auratus
D. leucomelas
D. imitator
0.0.2 imitator intermedius
D. lamasi
Grandis Day Gecko
Mali Uro
Hedgehog, bunnies, dog, fish, crawfish...

I used to keep dry cat food in mine's pen as cricket/roach food, since I figured at least it was SOMEWHAT edible, even if not ideal, so it was better she accidentally eat some of that along with an insect than eat a hunk of vegetable (it's happened; she once swallowed a big sliver of carrot and was soaking and straining all week, passing it hunk by hunk. It broke up but didn't look digested at all.) However, she quickly started eating ALL of the cat food, so I stopped. Now I buy canned snails and canned grasshoppers and throw one of those in to feed to food. Sometimes she eats them, sometimes she doesn't. I find it easiest to use those nonliving items to put the calcidust on.
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0.1 Coastal Carpet (Boots)
0.1 Western Hognose (Bebe)
0.1 Cane Toad (Hengo)
0.1 Solomon Islands Ground Skink (Minerva)

live food is always better, it's like buying canned lettuce for people. it wouldn't be nearly as good, it's not as fresh, it doesn't have much moisture content, it's not as nutritional, and its not natural. they aren't going to be eating something dead in the wild like that. but it's OK.
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RES
WTF
FBT
Russian Tortoise
Hingeback tortoise
Leos
Lawsons Dragon
Aussi
Ocelot Gecko
0.0.3 Vietnamese Mossy Treefrogs
Oregon Newt
Japanese FBN
American Bullfrog
0.0.4 D. tinctorius
D. auratus
D. leucomelas
D. imitator
0.0.2 imitator intermedius
D. lamasi
Grandis Day Gecko
Mali Uro
Hedgehog, bunnies, dog, fish, crawfish...

I agree. I wasn't suggesting canned bugs as a real alternative to live bugs, just putting one in as an alternative to something less digestible, since you've got to feed the food anyway while it's in there. But since whatever I use is going to get eaten sometimes if it has crickets or roaches on it, unless I start putting like entire full-sized carrots or something in there (the one she swallowed was a half of a mini-carrot cut lengthwise, so pretty big items are still an ingestion risk)I figure I might as well make the thing she's going to eat sometimes a dusted bug. This is a 17 ounce toad I'm talking about, so one grasshopper or snail isn't going to kill her appetite. She'll still have room for a few death head roaches.
I don't worry much about moisture content of food. I use sphagnum as a substrate (one reason I prefer roaches is they stay in the food dish, so moss ingestion isn't a problem. With crickets, I leave food for them in the dish and let her stake it out and ambush them there, but moss gulps will occasionally happen, so I haven't used them in a few months, at least not for her) so I can keep it very damp without bacteria becoming a problem. Plus, she soaks regularly anyway. Always goes to the bathroom in her dish, in fact, which is another reason I don't worry about keeping the substrate wetter than many suggest. At least not in this particular setup, with this particular toad. Others may vary.
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0.1 Coastal Carpet Python (Boots)
0.1 Western Hognose Snake (Bebe)
0.1 Cane Toad (Hengo)
0.1 White-Banded Sheen Skink (Minerva)
1.0 Northern Diamondback Terrapin (Queequeg)