I was working on my deck overlooking the pond today and noticed a huge, full sized bullfrog dead floating near my dock, normally wouldnt be of concwern except late last fall, I had 2 similar sized dead bull frogs just before Ice up. Was wondering if this is part of the life cycle or what if anything i can do to help these guys out, I do enjoy hearing the BrRRRRRRRRRrup in the evenings....I am in SW Ohio and water is about mid 50's with several rather cold nights in the last 10 days ( mid 30's)

Thanks guys, not sure where this post belongs so if you move it, please let me know where.

Salmonid

I found the same thing in my pond & figured it was a SMB that couldn't swallow a full grown BF. I've seen SMB capture BF's with it sticking out both sides of their mouths before. Anyway that's what I wrote it off to.

Could just be a stressful time of year for them and the time of year the old ones are most likely to die. After the first frost their main food supply (insects) pretty much disappears but when there is a sudden warm up their metabolism increases and they need sustenance but no insects.

Did you notice a hole in it?Has Rex been around lately?

With the gun Rex uses I'm not sure there would be much frog to even tell if it was a frog.

We always notice a fair number of dead frogs during the spring ice-out, not sure why but always blamed it on the weather. Since weather conditions now are similar to that time of year it makes sense that a few would die.

Thanks folks, it appears I am not the oly one with this problem, Ill try to do a little behind the scenes research and see what i can find out regarding life cycles.

BTW, nope, Rex the GBH did not strike this one.... I looke dit over and it lookd just fine

Salmonid

I did a little research and found this page, lots of good scientific info regarding the American Bull Frog.

http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Bullfrog

It appears they take 3 years to get to be mature adults so this guy was about 3 years old and can live up to 13 years in the wilds.

Still, the plot thickens.....

Salmonid

Thanks for posting that Mark. We used to have a lot of them around here but they disappeared. Now, we have leapord frogs. With their slow rate of metamorphosis, it must be hard to raise them commercially.