How to Choose the Right Food Types for Horned Frogs? A Detailed Guide to Selection Methods and Key Points

Anyone who has kept horned frogs knows that they do nothing but eat all day. The food you can offer includes all moving insects, earthworms, goldfish, pinky mice, and frogs, among others. Basically, they will eat just about anything, but if you want your horned frog to grow up healthy, choosing the right food is very important. Let's take a look below at what foods are available for horned frogs!

Frogs

The best food for horned frogs is frogs, such as paddy frogs, common frogs, bullfrogs, and others. If you want your frog to grow fast and grow well, its own kind is the first choice.

Pinky Mice

Pinky mice include the young of lab mice and lab rats. On the market they are divided into small pinkies and large pinkies. As the names suggest, small pinkies are the pinky mice of lab mice, and large pinkies are the pinky mice of lab rats. Since pinky mice have a low survival rate after purchase, it is recommended to freeze them alive right after buying them. When you need to feed them, thaw them at natural room temperature until the mouse's belly feels soft to the touch and the body no longer feels cold, and then you can feed it.

Fish and Shrimp

Freshwater shrimp, loaches, feeder fish, and others. Before feeding, remember to remove the heads and tails of shrimp and loaches, and shell the shrimp. After buying feeder fish, freeze them alive first, and thaw them when needed for feeding.

Crickets

When the frog is small, it cannot eat pinky mice, so it can only be given insects such as crickets as a substitute. At this stage, it is best to add some calcium powder or nutrient powder when feeding, because the nutrition of insects like crickets is limited and cannot meet the growth needs of frog larvae. As for whether to remove the heads and hind legs of crickets, decide for yourself. There have been reports of frogs being bitten to death by crickets or having their internal organs kicked and ruptured by the hind legs.

Notes

1. Feeder fish: Feeder fish have an extremely high chance of carrying parasites, and many fish diseases can be transmitted to amphibians. Some bacteria cannot be completely killed even after freezing.

2. Mealworms: Mealworms themselves are very high in protein and fat, but their calcium-to-phosphorus ratio is on the low side. Combined with their hard-to-digest chitinous shell, feeding them in large quantities can easily cause constipation in horned frogs (more obvious in young frogs), and in severe cases can lead to death.

3. Superworms: Superworms have powerful mouthparts. There have been multiple reports both in China and abroad that superworms can injure the stomachs of horned frogs, so before feeding you must definitely kill them or remove their mouthparts.

4. Goldfish: Because goldfish themselves contain extremely high fat content, long-term feeding will inevitably bring health risks.

5. Mice: As vertebrates, mice contain considerable calcium, and as complete living organisms their nutrition is very comprehensive. However, since what frogs get from digesting mammals is mainly fat, feeding mice too frequently will inevitably cause serious health risks, so the feeding frequency should be once every one to two months.