Baby Toads

[crockshard]

My husband and I managed to put the winter cover on our swimming pool yesterday without drowning 2 x under 4 grandchildren. A feat in itself! We also have ponds in our large garden.
When skimming leaves off the surface of the pool before putting the winter cover on, an adult toad jumped in and dived to the bottom. I was able to rescue it and removed it to one of our ponds. It would have quickly died with the chemicals in the pool. Then a baby toad (body about 1/2") jumped in. Rescued it, also.
Why was there a baby toad at the beginning of October???
It made our day to rescue them.

[Barmaid]

No idea but we've got loads of baby newts and toads round here. Here's hoping they survive the winter.

[roopower]

You could Google the sort of hanitat that toads need to hinernate through the winter. They may appreciate some help.

[roopower]

Whoops, didn't check - habitat/ hibernate

[ladybirder]

What a lovely story, made my day:-)

[Chipchopper]

I've seen lots of these tiny toads in my garden lately, unfortunately one appeared to have drowned, it was belly up in the bottom of a bucket of rain water.
The weather is still relatively mild, and they seem to be venturing out more, in the wet murky weather.
I've rescued many more from the close shave of my lawn mower blades.

[crockshard]

Well done, Chipchopper. I didn't realise that toads take 3 years to grow and mature before going back to ponds to mate. So baby one was presumably venturing out with its parent in mild autumn weather. We have loads of non-pond habitat for them to overwinter here. I thought baby one must have only just very recently turned into a toadlet, but it must have done that in the spring and just not grown much over the summer

[crockshard]

Dear Douglas,
I have been looking into turning our swimming pool into a salt-water pool. Large pool, 40,000 uk gallons/170,000hectolitres of water. Very expensive and complicated with our set-up to install a pool salinater.
Looks like it would need to have 7 tons of salt added when chlorine has evaporated, then add flocculant and algicide.Do you have any knowledge?