Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Debra King

Brettski, not sure about bull frogs, but the frogs here do hibernate. We have three or four different types of frogs and toads too, they burrow down into the muskeg and swamps and survive for at least 7 months. The frost can go down more than three or four feet here, amazing how they survive. I always know when the ground is thawed in spring, the chirping is hard to miss. It's also my wife's "alarm" to start preparing the garden.

(Bob-O...shot and a goal ..5:30 grin)
How long do the little buggers live?

Same here Wood. I always try to guess the first day when the peepers will be out. Its spring's alarm clock.

I saw an episod of Corwin's Quest on the discovery channel where Jeff Corwin dug a frog out of some snow in New England. He took it inside and thawed out the snow ball and the frog reanimated. He also said these frogs would get so cold that their hearts would stop and eyes would crystalize and still come alive again once temps warmed. Wasn't a bullfrog but pretty cool!

Brettski.... Jesus saves, and Gretzy scores on the rebound! Bob-O

Jesus wins!...drafts Brettski back to team for balance of his career.

(edit) Hey frog-folk...
Is it worth startin' a frog thread, or has it all been covered? I'm only on the learnin' end; sup to you.

Hi Debra- I am rather new on this forum & am very interested in growing some big frogs in my pond. We have tons of frogs around here but rarely ever any big ones anymore. There are swamps near my pond & 100s of peepers every year along with tons of toads but never any real bullfrogs.Plenty of tree frogs each year too. I have rain barrels near my garage that gets tree frog tadpoles every spring. I would like some info on getting some bull frogs from you. Is it best to stock tadpoles?? Or best to stock full grown frogs & hope they stay in the pond & dont move to other areas.Need help with info on how to & what not to do.

I see I am quickly turning from the “fish lady” to the “frog lady”, but I don’t mind at all. Like I said before I am really into frogs (good thing I don’t have webbed feet though). As far as the 5 minute delay in heartbeat during hibernation I can’t say that I am familiar with that one. In the deep south we don’t have enough cold weather for a heck of a lot of animals to go into deep hibernation. Also we keep our frogs in a climate controlled facility year round.

Frog 101: (Rana catesbeiana )

Tadpoles can turn into frogs anywhere from 4 months to two years. It depends on several factors. One is the temperature as you all have mentioned above. Second is the way nature designed it. As I mentioned earlier nature has it designed so that only a certain percentage of tads actually hatch out in the beginning. Further hatch-outs are meant solely for food for the original hatch. Keep in mind that frogs ARE cannibals. Even into adulthood they will quickly consume another frog of smaller size. In captivity you are able to prevent most of this cannibalism by sorting the sizes and keeping everyone “housed” according to age/size. This aids greatly in overall survival. One thing to keep in mind if you plan to do this is the fact that a tadpole can drown the instant he grows his fourth leg. If I am getting ahead of myself here let me remind everyone of the heart/lung valve that babies have. The moment a human child is born a “hole” closes between the heart and lung. This is to allow the child to breath air versus liquid (it is a lot more complicated than what I typed, but I am trying to give a crash course). The same basic concept is applied to tadpoles. If kept in captivity (tanks, raceways, or even ponds with deep banks) a tadpole will die if it is unable to “reach land” when that 4th leg evolves. That is why we float simple Styrofoam coolers with slits cut in the bottom in every tank of tadpoles we have. When that 4th leg arrives, the tadpole is now a frog and can no longer survive completely underwater. It is also interesting, to me at least, that the frog can now use his deteriorating tail as a food source for quite some time.
When stocking tadpoles into a non-controlled/pond environment you need to expect a 50% mortality. Tads have a multitude of predators ranging from house cats, to snakes, to fish, to gators, etc.

Giant American Bullfrogs (what I “specialize” in) are absolutely the best in my opinion. Starting out small enough to fit in the palm of your hand they can grow large enough to encompass both of your hands with their legs hanging over the side. Touching on the side of redundancy let me remind you that they are cannibals. Most of you have no interest in keeping them in captivity so I won’t go into much detail (I could almost write a book on that). I will say however that if you are interested in doing this you MUST keep the different sizes compartmentalized to avoid a loss.
On the nature side of things a female frog becomes a true breeder at age two. At age three she becomes what I term a “selected breeder” meaning she is capable of maximum egg production.
Sadly enough we (meaning humans) have severely reduced the number of frogs in the wild by our use of pesticides and other chemicals. That is why you no longer see the vast amount of giant bullfrogs in the wild that you did decades ago. Chemical applications lead to mutations in the young which lead to infertility, stunting, and death. Restocking pure bullfrogs into the wild is a necessity for I fear what the future would hold without them. I sound dramatic here, but anyone who has rocked on the back porch on a warm summer’s night knows what I mean. Even now I like to wander through our Ranaculture facility just to listen to the frogs “talk”.
Frogs will wander between ponds to some degree, but they are also similar to humans in that they will hang around an area that makes them happy. A good environment, good food, and good mating will keep most of them at home.

As you can see I could easily take up most of Bob’s newly purchased bandwidth with this subject (not to mention the fact that I tend to rattle on anyway), so I will hush for now. Thanks though for your interest in one of my favorite topics.


Deb

Frog-cellent dissertation! Thank you.
Can GABF's be raised in a midwest climate? If yes, given a fairly ideal natural habitat, is it possible to maintain a natural and self-sustaining GABF village?

Debra- thanks for the frog info. You did confirm alot of what I had heard in the past about bullfrogs. I do want to raise some for my pond. I have raised other types of frogs in the summer in my rainbarrels. I knew about having to have something for them to crawl onto when they got their final set of legs or they would drown. I always used small pieces of pine, very thin.I put them in when they got their legs & it worked quite qwell. These were not bullfrogs though. Tree frogs,peepers & toads.
I have 5 rain barrels all connected together to water my garden & flowers. One is a 150 gal. stainless steel tub about 4 ft in Dia. These are for the most part located in a shady area.Each year they get into these barrels & lay eggs & I have 100s of tadpoles. I dont understand of how they even get in them for they are 3-4 ft high When they develope enough to crawl onto the pieces of wood I release them into creeks & ponds except for the toads which I release in a field near my home. I would like to try this with bull frogs to release into my pond.I need tadpoles that will be developed into frogs by the end of summer for I drain the barrels in the winter. I understand that most bullfrog tadpoles take 2 yrs. to develope into frogs thats why I need some that will be developed by the end of one summer.
I went to your site but I need more info on cost ,shipping & when would be the right time in the spring to do this.
I too have noticed that over the years there are less & less bull frogs. Years ago I used to go giging each summer with friends & we could get all the big ones we wanted. Now it is rare to see any really big ones in my area. 100s of small frogs but no big ones anymore. It would be "oh so sweet" to raise 8-10 to maturity & release into my 1/2 acre pond.

WRT fewer frogs around ponds I believe another large contributor to fewer frogs is predation. There are more preditors of frogs than in the past.
I know when I was growing up the fur market was booming & the varmits that eat frogs were kept in check. Nowdays with wearing fur being PI trappers numbers are few due to low fur prices.

I don't grow sweet corn because the coons eat it all leaving nothing for the table.

Deb how many tad poles for a 10 acre lake and for about a 2 acre lake?

I didn't know bullfrogs were all the rage. I see them all the time in my pond in the summer. I also see all the huge honk'n tadpoles they have in the shallow edges. But the pond has very few fish(possibly, just bluegill? and bullhead). If it did, the bullfrog population probably wouldn't be so elevated.
How's it go?
You can't have your cake and eat it too.

big-pond- Have you been to your pond lately? Let me know when you catch some big bluecats.

Debra- Where are you? I miss your humor! How many frogs does it take to screw in a light bulb? See, I need a certified frog biologist and a sense of humor!

Sorry for the much delayed posting time. We are dead smack in the middle of our busy season at the office, and my free weekends have been devoted to the recent UNELUSIVE paranormal activity. Cemetaries are hotbeds when Mercury is in retrograde.
As far as the frogs/lightbulbs... I have seen it done with only one frog, depending of course on the development of that last leg. :p

BP- Generally customers stock about 100 to the acre (remember you can count on a 50% mortality), but the # to put in is really your call. 50 survivors per acre in a pond will bring you great fun within a year or so. So much that the wife might get you to upgrade the thickness of your window panes. LOL

If you all REALLY want to get into some serious frog Q and A sessions, let's start another thread devoted to them. While I deeply appreciate all the warm birthday wishes attached to this thread, the frogs might get lost one day if we get into deep detail and forget where we put the info.

Lance frogs are becoming "the other white meat" rather quickly. You appear to be in an area that has been relatively uneffected by human contamination ( ie pesticides and such), but we delivered over 3000 tadpoles, 25 adult frogs, and about 200 baby frogs via our truck to Indiana just this week. Of course my driver, David (who is a lunatic), said the evening weather got so cold that they had to take them into the hotel at night. He said they "accidentally" lost a few of the babies because they could not find any toothpicks to use after supper.

Deb

Deb- this may be a very stupid question but why do tapoles come to the surface to grab a bubble of air every so often? I have seen this in many other ponds & know they get their oxygen fron the water. Sometimes it seems as though they are all doing it & other times none do it.

It is a natural thing, as they are experimenting with what they instinctively know will happen soon. They really are not getting air but rather "checking things out on the surface".
Call them nosy, but they somehow know that they will be out in the open real soon. Do your tads have any legs yet? If so then you will see a lot more of this inquisitive behavior as they get closer to being frogs.
They are interesting creatures to watch aren't they?

Deb

Another question for Debra King. Did you know that if you have an all male bluegill pond and no largemouth that you'll have so many tadpoles that you could populate every pond in Georgia?

You will also get lots of tadpoles with just a yellow perch pond or about any pond with very few bass.

Deb-yes some have legs. Some have 2 legs & a few 3 legs. I have seen Tads coming to the surface in another nearby pond often. Seems like when one does it they all do it for awhile then none of them do it for a long time.Does seem like the more developed ones do it more often than the smaller ones.I am running a small diffuser in the tank along with an airstone. Is all the turbulance in the tank from the diffuser a bad thing? I always thought the Tads prefered still water.

Deb - You said about tadpoles coming to the surface "It is a natural thing, as they are experimenting with what they instinctively know will happen soon. They really are not getting air but rather "checking things out on the surface". Are you sure that the surfacing tadpoles are not gulping some air while at the surface? At what size of bullfrog tadpole do the lungs start development?

Good point Bill. I should have been more thorough in my explanation (like I said earlier we need to start a frog thread if we are getting into deep detail).

Ya'll hit me kinda hard on a Monday morning, but if memory serves me correctly.....
The tads have lungs even when they do not have legs, but the lungs are underdeveloped. As they age (grow legs and mature) they will crash the surface of the pond and appear to "breath". Actual oxygen uptake is not what they are doing, but instead they are experimenting. Another point to make here is the fact that while they appear to "gulp" oxygen, they are actually helping to mature and develop their lungs. Mind you they are not using this oxygen like we do (or like they will do when they become frogs), but they are helping to expand their developing lungs and prevent lung collapse.

This above is pulled from memory so give me the liberty to edit later when I get a chance to look some things up.

Dan- As far as the diffuser goes, just make sure that you are not bubbling the tads to death. Is there a slow setting that you can use for the diffuser? Maybe just run it in the evening? Depending on the heat you may get away with the airstone by itself! You do want some algae buildup in the tank if possible, so too much circulating water could present a double whammy on the tads.

Deb

Debbie how big do your frogs grow? I would like the largest size that you have...how much are they and what do you call them?

Deb, tell me what you know about cricket frogs, we have a small number of them at the pond, I am guessing you could fit 2 or 3 of them on a dime. We also have lots of Bull frogs, a few leapord frogs, and a few tree frogs as well.

big_pond, I got regular old bullfrogs in my pond and in the catchment basin above the pond. I usually have a good crop of bullfrog tadpoles, which I would share with you. If your interested in growing them from tads. I'm about 50-60 miles from the Ga. line near Greenville SC. Let me know if you're interested.
Apologies to Deb, if I'm tromping on your sales.
Tim