Key Technical Points for Feeding and Breeding Toads

1. Site Selection

The breeding site should be chosen in a place with ponds and pools, abundant insect sources, and relatively warm temperatures. Generally, in front of and behind houses, waste ditches, waste ponds, or water pits can be used, or rice fields with convenient irrigation and drainage, sufficient water sources, good water retention but relatively lean soil can be selected as breeding sites. The breeding site should have a 1.5 m high wall built with bricks, or film or gauze netting can be used as a wall, or iron wire or small hillside woven material can be used, to prevent toads from escaping. The inlet of the rice field should preferably use a plastic gauze net as a sluice gate to block tadpoles from escaping.

2. Introduction of Breeding Stock

When the breeding scale is very small, breeding toads are mainly obtained by catching. Adult toads mostly leave their hibernation burrows one after another at the end of March or in early April, slowly crawling out of the water area. Toads prefer warm, dark, and humid environments. Usually during the day they rest in grass along ditches, in earthen burrows, or in dark and damp places such as bricks, tiles, and stone holes behind houses, and they are generally not easy to find. On rainy days or after rain, they are often very easy to catch on open ground by the river or beside field paths.

During spring plowing, toads also appear in large numbers in rapeseed fields, green manure fields, and on the paths of seedling fields, and at this time they can be caught in large quantities. On warm, still nights, this is the best time to catch toads. Every evening about 2 hours after dark until dawn the next day, toads come out to prey on insects and can be caught at any time. At this time, the places with the most toads are the open ground in front of and behind houses, especially in the middle of the night when they are more active. Sometimes in a few hours, several dozen jin to several hundred jin of toads can be caught.

The catching method is to use relatively wide bamboo tongs to gently clamp the toad, then put it into a bamboo basket or a wooden box with gaps. Do not put it into a plastic bag or closed container, to prevent suffocation. When catching at night, a three-cell flashlight can be used to shine strong light on the toad, and it will not easily run away. Because toads have relatively short limbs and poor jumping ability, they generally crawl slowly, so as long as they are found, catching them is very easy. For the ratio of male to female breeding toads, generally 3 females to 1 male is suitable. The fertilization rate can reach more than 90%. The stocking density is 1-2 pairs per sq m.

3. Feeding

The main food of toads is insects. Small insects include armyworms, ants, aphids, mosquitoes, stink bugs, scarab beetles, weevils, cutworms, beetles, etc.; large insects include mole crickets, big green leafhoppers, etc.

For artificial feeding, black light lamps can be used to attract insects or insects can be caught manually to solve their feed problem. In addition, culturing algae and other plankton can also solve the staple food of toads. Pig, cattle, and human manure and urine, vegetable waste, kitchen wastewater, waste from slaughterhouses and food factories, manure water, or bran can also be put into the breeding and rearing field to cultivate water quality and promote the growth of algae and plankton. Manual catching and gathering of fly larvae can also be done to meet their food needs.

4. Breeding

From the end of February to March each year, when the water temperature is 11-15°C, the Chinese giant toad mates and lays eggs. Toads waking from hibernation generally gather at dusk on the banks of ponds or on aquatic plants and floating objects. Males sometimes call and sometimes move their bodies to seek females, and females come upon hearing the sound. Toads have strong reproductive capacity. One adult toad can lay 3,000-5,000 eggs a year.

For artificial breeding, eggs should be collected in time, and the collected eggs should be transferred as soon as possible from the bucket to the rearing pond or paddy field breeding base, so as to avoid suffocation from being piled up too long. For egg placement density, generally 500 egg strings are placed per mu, with an average of 2,600 eggs per string, that is, about 1.3 million eggs are placed per mu. Under the condition of a water temperature of 18-24°C, fertilized eggs can hatch into small tadpoles after 3 days and nights. Newly hatched tadpoles have a fish-like body shape, with a tail and external gills.

After the tadpoles begin to feed, they can be fed a mixture of boiled egg yolk, steamed bun crumbs, and vegetable leaves. After about one month, the tadpoles can be seen first developing hind limbs. The forelimb buds are hidden by the operculum and are not obvious from the external appearance. After the hind limbs are fully developed, the tail begins to shrink, and before the forelimbs appear, the internal gills of the tadpole gradually shrink, and it begins to breathe with lungs. The tail also gradually becomes shorter and disappears, and wart-like glands appear on the back. This is the juvenile toad after metamorphosis. Juvenile toads feed on small insects, and feeding is basically the same as for adults.

5. Overwintering of Toads

Overwintering of toads is the key to artificial toad breeding. The survival rate during overwintering directly affects the yield and benefits of toad rearing. At present, people have explored a new method of artificial outdoor overwintering ponds for toads.

Choose a place with long sunlight duration, good wind shelter, and no water accumulation. Dig a pond with a side length of 135 cm square and a depth of 50 cm. Make a wooden frame with a side length of 130 cm square and a height of 70 cm (no bottom, no cover). Put the wooden frame into the pit pond. The bottom should not be too large, and it is suitable if accumulated water can seep away through the gaps.

At 40 cm from the ground, use wooden boards 139 cm long and 50 cm wide to form a small chamber. The lowest layer is filled with a mixture of fallen leaves, rice straw, and soil, the middle layer is filled with fallen leaves, the upper layer is covered with rice straw, and the lower chamber is filled with soil. Finally, cover the top of the pond with wire mesh, and insert a thermometer and hygrometer into the pond.

In the natural environment, toads generally overwinter in fields, beside ponds, and in relatively humid, wind-sheltered places with relatively sufficient sunlight. If the environment is unsuitable, the overwintering mortality rate is very high. For artificial breeding, good overwintering protection work should be done.