Frogs?????

[GradStudentLeper]

I keep hearing people mention frogs as food..... What kind of frogs? I would like to add more variety to my checkereds diet.... They have turned their spoiled little noses up at night crawlers, and salmon/ tilapia,.... adn they are not liking the feeder fish lately, and I switched brands of Pinkie mice and I am having issues wiht them about that ..... argggg.... spoiled children are driving me nuts.....

You live in California, therefore Thou Shalt Not Feed Native Frogs to Your Snakes. Between bullfrogs (these you can feed to your snakes) chytrid, agricultural runoff in the central valley and habitat destruction, there is not an frog in CA which is not in danger of extinction, other than introduced bullfrogs, kill them with fire if you can.

That having been said, snakes eat plenty of frogs in the wild, and they live to sexual maturity and a long time thereafter. Parasites are not a problem unless the snake is suffering from some other sort of stress such as a lack of food or improper temperature. It is of course better to feed lab raised frogs. Thankfully there are biological supply companies that can ship tadpoles to your door in bulk...

[k2l3d4]

It is of course better to feed lab raised frogs. Thankfully there are biological supply companies that can ship tadpoles to your door in bulk...

There is?> Anyone have any experience with something like this.... and more information in this arena would be greatly apppreciated.

[KITKAT]

PLEASE don't feed frogs to your garters! Frogs are endangered in so many parts of the world that it is alarming, and they are not a healthy food for a caged animal (your snake).

The parasites in frogs do not all die during freezing, and feeding frogs will build up a parasite population in your snake. Wild snakes survive this because they are outdoors, and move from place to place, but in a viv, your snake eats and drinks where he poops. Thus, parasites build up in a captive snake to a level that will kill or seriously harm his health.

If you MUST feed frogs for some reason that I cannot imagine, please feed bullfrogs. At least you won't be endangering another native species (Bullfrogs are not native west of the Rockies, and can endanger native frogs there, also).

[GradStudentLeper]

PLEASE don't feed frogs to your garters! Frogs are endangered in so many parts of the world that it is alarming, and they are not a healthy food for a caged animal (your snake).

The parasites in frogs do not all die during freezing, and feeding frogs will build up a parasite population in your snake. Wild snakes survive this because they are outdoors, and move from place to place, but in a viv, your snake eats and drinks where he poops. Thus, parasites build up in a captive snake to a level that will kill or seriously harm his health.

If you MUST feed frogs for some reason that I cannot imagine, please feed bullfrogs. At least you won't be endangering another native species (Bullfrogs are not native west of the Rockies, and can endanger native frogs there, also).

There is so much wrong here, I dont know where to begin.

Yes, many frogs are threatened world wide. But not every frog. In fact, not even most frogs. Depending on where you live there are numerous species of frog which are not threatened and in fact are doing better than most other frogs because they are stress adapted and have the ability to deal with human disturbances.

Bullfrogs are in this group, as are some toads (woodhousii and terrestris for example), leopoard frogs, cuban treefrogs (non-native), green treefrogs, acris, and few others in the US alone. These are the sorts of frogs you find in suburban areas, and they are doing just fine. You need to be able to ID the frogs but if you can collect and raise their tadpoles, or breed them (green treefrogs and bullfrogs will readily breed in aquaria) feeding them to your snakes provided you dont have a few dozen. If you breed them you can even have a year round supply without damaging local populations.

Parasites are in everything you feed your snakes. I have addressed this before in this thread, but I will say it again. Your snakes have parasites. Everything you feed to your snakes has parasites. The question is, what type of parasites, how many, and can the snake deal with them?

The parasites that frogs have can be dealt with by the snake's immune system (the ones in pinkies may or may not meet this criteria). If the frogs had too many parasites, they would be dead, so an individual frog will not harm the frog too much. The parasites have to compete for resources in the snake, their populations wont get too high unless there is something wrong with your snake.

Here is a news flash. If your snakes actually get sick from the parasites they have, it is another problem. You are not feeding them well enough to give them the resources to deal with the parasites they already have, you are not providing them with a proper environment etc. Snakes do not survive in the wild because they are "outdoors" Snakes in the wild die from their parasite loads all the time. They die because they get too cold, and because they dont get enough food, or they catch another pathogen. The wild is not some magical clean place where everything is Happy Smiley Fun Times. You dont swim in a lot of the water that garter snakes live in because you will develop a lethal protazoan infection. The snakes deal with that every day. An adult garter has an ~10% chance of dying from predation, parasites, and starvation from year to year.

Provided you are doing everything right (which from the way you are ranting, you were not when your snakes died) you can cut that mortality rate dramatically while still giving them their natural food.

[FunkyRes]

You live in California, therefore Thou Shalt Not Feed Native Frogs to Your Snakes. Between bullfrogs (these you can feed to your snakes) chytrid, agricultural runoff in the central valley and habitat destruction, there is not an frog in CA which is not in danger of extinction, other than introduced bullfrogs, kill them with fire if you can.

Not true.
Pacific Treefrogs (Pseudacris regilla) are in absolutely no danger and are regularly fed upon by garter snakes in the wild.