Grisly find in my yard - sort of neat, but mostly grisly
 

Noticed a couple dessicated salamanders in my window well, guess they must have fallen in there looking for a spot to hibernate. Went to clean them up and found about 14 dead salamanders under the rocks. Most of them were dead but in a clump of about 8 all huddled together two were not dead.

I haven't seen a tiger salamander locally in something like 20 years, and now I find a whole pile of dead ones.

Unfortunately the two survivors are likely not long on this earth, they're pretty dehydrated and emaciated. I'm going to see if I can rehabilitate them, it's not too much effort to go buy some mealworms and crickets for them.

Boy I feel kinda bad that my basement window well was basically a tiger salamander graveyard :( It's so weird, why mine? My neighbours window well 4 feet away has none that I can see. Weird.

They were looking in at your tank! LOL

man that would suck to find... hope your house doesnt get haunted by the ghosts of a thousand salamanders. good luck on the rehab.

A tiger salamander wondered right into our office in the spring. He looked to be in pretty bad shape too. One of the ladies at the office offered to take him home and try to save him. I glad to say he made a full recovery. All he really needed was a pool and some crickets.

Good luck with the ones that made it.

Glad to hear it! :)

Bought some crickets and some mealworms, they're now sitting in a bucket with some soil and a water dish and their prospective food in there too. They're pretty much unresponsive to anything though, although they seem to wake up if I spray some mist on them. We'll see, I guess if they thought they were hibernating then it would probably take some time to snap out of it.

After digging holes for the support posts for a deck at my old place, before we could place the posts and fill with concrete, we had to remove a half dozen frogs from each hole (mostly dead unfortunately), and a mouse. Not sure whether they got in there by mistake or whether something drew them in, but it was a little unfortunate.

I haven't seen a tiger salamander in years either, but if 14 of them are getting stuck in an area three feet by one and a half or so, I'd assume there's a healthy population around your place.

There haven't been any more since but I guess they're all underground by now, it's so cold outside at night.

Indeed, must be a healthy population, but alas, the flipside is they're 12 fewer now. Well, 14 fewer, as I haven't released the two survivors. It's so cold outside now I don't think I should release them until the spring. Been reading up and talking to people who know more about them and seems like it ought to be easy enough for them to hibernate in my terrarium for a few months. In the meantime I'll try fattening them up with crickets and whatnot.

They don't seem to do much. Been about a week and a half and they started eating a few days ago so now at least they're putting some weight on, but mostly they just kinda sit there. At night I notice they walk around a bit but even still they don't seem to be terribly active. I guess they are supposed to be hibernating now so I guess that could explain that.

Nevertheless I do think they are pretty neat. I should try getting some photos of them, they're really quite pretty in a way.

awww, poor lil guys that died. :cry: I'd never seen a tiger salamander so I googled them. they're little cuties :smile: maybe not as cute as my gecko, but right up there with them. :lol:

way to go for taking care of the last two though :biggrin:

My sister had Tiger Salamanders in her Terrarium for years growing up.. They over-winter just fine. Hers loved earthworms. Maybe its not too cold out yet to dig up the flower beds to find some.. :wink:

yeah, definitely get pics up!

are you are feeding live only feed? and at random times (or just within the time when they hunt in nature... nocturnal i would think)? I think it would be a bad idea for you to feed dead or to help them feed in any way (other than supplying the food of course). If you release them into the wild and they expect to be fed at a certain time all your efforts might just end up a waste.

i never seen for for like 12 years then about a 3 months ago is was on a field job just south of my shop in se calgary the guy that was with me went over to this pond and pick up a sheet of ply wood and said there was 2 that wear like 14 inchs long i didnt believe him so i went over an he wasnt full of it i caught one and it was 15inchs it was crazy huge looked awsome colby at elite said they can get to 18inchs since the 5 of them have wanderd into the shop.

Yeah, I'm reading they can get pretty big! I had no idea. These guys are about 3.5", maybe 4" head to tail.

So far I'm feeding them crickets, and some kind of icky wormy things you can get at Petland. Apparently you have to be careful what you feed them, like, the crickets can't be more than 2 weeks old and superworms need to be decapitated because they can bite and chew their way out after being swallowed. :eek: So no superworms!! But trying some wax worms (moth caterpillars) since they're apparently high in fat and these guys could use some bulking up. Although one of them won't touch worms, already seems ot have developed a preference for crickets.

The one sucky thing is that every now and again I find an escapee cricket.

The one upside though is that I've always wanted to get into dart frogs, and just hadn't ever gotten around to it because I thought feeding baby crickets would be a hassle. Now that I'm doing it anyhow at the moment it wouldn't be much of an incremental step. :lol: Now to convince the wife. Yeah, yeah, it'll be a good educational exercise for our toddler! Yeah yeah!

The superworm story is bogus. That thing is very dead by the time they get it down.

Wax worms have an awful calcium / phosphorus ratio and crickets aren't very good either. You have to supplement them by dusting with a good calcium powder (preferably calcium carbonate) like RepCal. You have to consider calcium relative to phosphorus because excess phosphorus can impede calcification, a min 2:1 ratio is required. Same like your reef, maybe grind up a cricket and try your Hanna meter on it :)

Fatty things with better calcium supply are earthworms and hornworms. I've used both blow fly maggots and trout worms as well but I am not sure of the nutritional profile on those. The bait fridge at mowhawk is a great resource.

You should try darts, they're awesome but if you think 2 week crickets are small you are in for a surprise.

One guy I was talking to said he lost one because it ate a cricket that was too large. I asked how he knew it was the cricket that did him in, he said "because the thing crawled out after he died." :eek: So I'm not so sure that it's completely bogus, but I'm glad to hear it's probably not as big a risk as I thought it might be.

I've been reading the dart boards for years, so I sort of know the score on that one. I have no interest in trying to keep thumbnails, rather, no interest in trying to keep cultures of wingless fruit flies. That's just far too much for me.

What's the profile like on red wigglers? I could always start a compost bucket up to keep those, that's not too much work.

Tony do you still have orchids? Those would look nice with darts.

(Oh man you're so screwed!)

Still do have some orchids although these days the collection is much smaller, restricted to those that can survive my level of devotion to them these day .. would like to setup a little terrarium. I have this great idea for masdevallias that involves modding a wine fridge :eek: :lol: ... One day, one day.

Here are some pictures I was able to get of the lizardy dudes...

http://members.shaw.ca/hobiesailor/a...alamanders.jpg

http://members.shaw.ca/hobiesailor/a...nder_limpy.jpg

http://members.shaw.ca/hobiesailor/a...der_junior.jpg

http://members.shaw.ca/hobiesailor/a...er_junior1.jpg

They're so cute :)

Tony, I'm going to Costa Rica in two weeks, I'll fill my pockets for you.:lol:

They're looking good Tony. Got any names yet?

So far it's just "The smaller one" and the "The bigger one". :lol:

The smaller one is a little more brightly coloured, and the bigger one had a really bad wound on one of his back legs and I wasn't sure if he was going to overcome it (it was really badly cut up). Anyhow he's healing up but I was thinking that he could be called "Limpy".