Techniques for collecting toad skin and scraping toad venom from captive-bred toads

Toads are distributed throughout the country. From late spring to late autumn, they mostly hide during the day among grass and crops, or under stones and in earthen holes around houses and in dry land, and at dusk they often crawl along roadsides and on grass in search of food. They move slowly and clumsily, are not good at jumping or swimming, and can only crawl on their bellies.

In late autumn and early winter, adults enter the water and overwinter hidden under rotten grass, mud and stones at the bottom of the water. They begin to reproduce from deep winter to early spring. During the spawning period, males and females pair up in amplexus in the water or on the bank, with the male riding on the back of the female; the female crawls along the bottom while laying eggs, and this can last more than 10 hours, until the female has finished laying eggs, only then does the male leave. Spawning mostly occurs at night on rainy days or after rain clears. Eggs are laid at the edge of ponds where the water layer is relatively shallow or in ditches rich in humus material.

It takes about 2 months from eggs being laid to becoming young toads, and in early to mid-April the small toads that metamorphosed that year can be seen. Their main foods include locusts, mole crickets, cutworms, scarab beetles, cabbage caterpillars, ants, snails, ladybugs, earthworms and so on. For artificial captive breeding, you can choose wild natural sites such as vegetable plots, orchards, ponds, wasteland and woods, and after enclosing them with a 50 cm high mesh fence, you can raise them in captivity. There is no need to make a special investment to build facilities. Toads not only safely pass the hot summer in vegetable plots and orchards with a good ecology, but also play a wonderful biological pest-control role by eating insects, so fruits and vegetables can be grown without pesticides, achieving two benefits at once. Using lights to trap various insects has an even lower cost.

After the toads that have shed their skin have their venom scraped, put them into a captive breeding area with water and grass. Generally there is no need to feed them; if there are relatively many, insect feed such as earthworms and yellow mealworms can be provided. For 1 mu of captive breeding, the benefit from skin collection and venom scraping is several thousand yuan. Because toads can be caught locally, the investment is relatively small. If an area without toad resources has to introduce breeding stock from elsewhere, then the loss will outweigh the gain.