Gutloading

Sam Forster

In wild green tree frogs food sources include a wide diversity of insects supplemented with the occasional small mammal in large individuals. Although it is not necessary, and usually impossible, to exactly replicate this diversity certain characteristics of the wild food sources should be emulated. When a frog consumes a prey item in the natural environment the frog gains both the nutritional value of the prey and the nutritional value of any items contained within the prey's stomach. As a pet owner there are two important reasons to be aware of this:

• If a prey animal has recently eaten plant material covered in a poison such as weed killer or snail bait, this will be passed on to the frogs.
• If insects are fed directly to the frogs after being kept on bran the frogs do not gain the benefits of vitamin and minerals present in other aspects of the insect diet.

In the captive environment the most commonly used technique to rectify this problem is gutloading. Gutloading involves feeding the feed insects large amounts of vegetable matter before feeding them to the frogs. The steps involved in this technique are outlined below:

1. Isolate the required number of crickets for a particular feed in a separate container.
2. Feed oranges, carrots, lettuce, bran and cereal.
3. After forty-five minutes to an hour feed the crickets to your frogs.

This technique replicates the natural environment, however is limited by the availability of vegetable matter to present to the feed insects. For this reason I recommend using a combination of gutloading and coating the insects with commercially available vitamin and mineral supplements (the kind designed for reptiles and amphibians). Although this method is probably an overkill it ensures the frogs will always obtain the required nutrients, particularly those which may not be required for growth but may be required for breeding and thus are not obvious in their absence.