# A Little About Our Bullfrog Farm



## phrogpharmer (Apr 25, 2005)

I've been asked for some info on our Bullfrog farm, so here goes. I think I'll do this in installments.

My wife and I raise and sell up to 6000 Bullfrogs (Rana catesbeiana) a year on 1/4 acre of rented ground. We provide 4 sizes of Bullfrogs. We raise them year-round. 95% of our Bullfrogs are sold as lab animals for teaching and medical research. We keep 36 customers. Some of our customers have been with us since 1994. We do not sell Bullfrogs for food.
We began our project to turn Bullfrogs into farm animals in 1989 after graduating from the College of Southern Idaho Commercial Aquaculture Program. We started with 6 wild caught Bullfrogs in 3 Rubbermaid garbage cans in our living room. After a while we realized that it would take a lot more than 6 Bullfrogs to do the work to develop a new species of farm animal.
in 1990 we moved our project to 2 unused ponds belonging to a very generous and helpful fish farmer 1/2 hour drive from our house. We seined 10,000 late stage tadpoles from a pond belonging to another generous and helpful farmer and stocked them in the 2 ponds. After about 2 weeks the tadpoles had eaten all of the available food in the ponds and were starving and dying. We asked a local grocer for his overripe excess produce and he generously gave us as much as 75 lbs a day of all types of veggies that we chopped and ground up and fed to the tadpoles. By August we had 2500 froglets which we moved into a concrete holding pond. They started starving and dying because they wouldn't eat the fish food pellets that we tried to feed them. Bullfrogs are sight feeders and will grab anything that moves but if it doesn't continue to move in their mouth they will spit it out, wipe off their tongue with their hand and refuse to try to eat that thing again. 
I'll continue this narration later if anybody is interested.


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## Alice In TX/MO (May 10, 2002)

Yes, please.


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## GTX63 (Dec 13, 2016)

Please continue.
I'd love to see some photos as well.


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## IlliniosGal (Jun 3, 2019)

Please continue, this is very very interesting!


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## AmericanStand (Jul 29, 2014)

Sounds awesome so far. 
Did you actually set out to develop A new species of farm animals or do you mean a new breed of better farm frog ?


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## CKelly78z (Jul 16, 2017)

Whodathunk ? It's cool that you found your niche in the market. Thanks, and yes, please continue.


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## HDRider (Jul 21, 2011)

I'd like to hear why you don't raise them to eat. My guess there is little to no profit in it, kind of like cattle.

I hate Chinese bullfrogs.

Yes, please share your story.


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## crehberg (Mar 16, 2008)

I'll agree with everyone else... please continue...I'm intrigued! I wonder if we used some of your frogs when I was in college!


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## mzgarden (Mar 16, 2012)

Fascinating, please do continue.


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## AmericanStand (Jul 29, 2014)

HDRider said:


> I'd like to hear why you don't raise them to eat. My guess there is little to no profit in it, kind of like cattle.
> 
> I hate Chinese bullfrogs.
> 
> Yes, please share your story.



Chinese bullfrogs?


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## HDRider (Jul 21, 2011)

AmericanStand said:


> Chinese bullfrogs?


Indonesians are responsible for 45% of the world's frog legs exports

One of the world's largest consumers of frog legs, many of which are imported from neighboring Southeast Asian countries, China also has a proliferating frog farm industry.


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## AmericanStand (Jul 29, 2014)

Really? I never knew that , for some reason I thought they were from Louisiana.


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## HDRider (Jul 21, 2011)

AmericanStand said:


> Really? I never knew that , for some reason I thought they were from Louisiana.


I believe there are some domestics, but their market share is shrinking

Same thing happened with catfish, but I think they have to call the imported fish by another name. US catfish production has dropped by over half while imports from Vietnam have increased roughly tenfold. Vietnamese farmers face considerably lower costs in catfish production.


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## po boy (Jul 12, 2010)

HDRider said:


> I believe there are some domestics, but their market share is shrinking
> 
> Same thing happened with catfish, but I think they have to call the imported fish by another name. US *catfish* production has dropped by over half while imports from Vietnam have increased roughly tenfold. Vietnamese farmers face considerably lower costs in catfish production.


Swai different texture and taste than US catfish.


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## phrogpharmer (Apr 25, 2005)

Our Bullfrogs are American Bullfrogs, native to SE Canada, Eastern US, and parts of NE Mexico. They are the largest frog found in the Western Hemisphere. Due to people moving them around over the last 150 years they have become established in parts of Western Canada, Western US, and Mexico, as well as Central and South America, and Asia. They are listed as invasive in many of these areas.
When we began our project, all of the available literature (pre-internet) indicated that there had been many unsuccessful attempts to farm them in the US, with a lot of scams associated with "frog farms". We were advised by numerous experts and agencies that we were on a fool's errand. 

Upon seeing the froglets totally refuse our pellets and die by the dozens each day, we hung Coleman lanterns just above them to attract night flying insects (no electricity at this location). This solution met with limited success because most of the flying insects were too big for the tiny froglets to catch and eat. In desperation we placed morts from the fish farm on low platforms to attract flies. We attracted lots of flies and the froglets had some success at catching and eating them. The morts decomposed rapidly and their juice fouled the water which caused froglet mortalities. We ended up replacing the morts daily to keep things "clean".
Keep in mind our project site was 20 miles from town and we both had full time jobs.
We studied the life cycle of flies and found that fly larvae upon reaching full size will crawl away from the food source to pupate in the soil or any dark dry protected place.
We designed and built a rudimentary larvarium using a Rubbermaid garbage can (of course). Now when we replaced the slimy fly egg covered morts we put them in the larvarium where they became the food source for growing larvae. Our larvarium had a spigot to drain the juice and a removable chamber that collected the maturing larvae.
After setting up a low platform with a lip to hold the squirming larvae we poured our first batch of larvae (about 1 cup) onto the platform and stood back.
The froglets began to climbing onto the platform and going after the larvae with gusto! 
Within about 15 minutes the larvae were gone but some of the froglets became quite agitated and started writhing and going into spasms. The larvae were chewing their way out of the froglets and emerging through the skin of their ventral surface.
It turned out that some of the larvae were twice the size of the others and it was these that had killed the froglets. After buying and trying 6 or 7 strainers we found a plastic collander that strained out the large larvae, allowing us to feed only the smaller larvae to the froglets. 
We "hatched out" some larvae from each of the two sizes and discovered that the larger larvae were Blue Bottle Flies and the smaller larvae were House Flies (more about this later).
We had about 1000 froglets on "feed".
Winter was coming.


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## showmeonthedollwhere (Dec 19, 2019)

Well done


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## Wolf mom (Mar 8, 2005)

Well, I'll be....please continue your story. This is fascinating.


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## bobp (Mar 4, 2014)

Wow what an awesome story.....looking forward to the continuation

I have been asking for the bull frog and green leopard frog tadpoles that are on the fish trucks when I buy fathead minnows.....they give em to you, allowing me to seed more bullfrogs in our ponds....

I buy 2-5# of fatheads a year for each pond as an attempt to help control mosquito larvae and to have my own source of Crappie bait.....and I felt free bullfrog tadpoles were a godsend lol....they eat alot of insects I figure...

Note the tadpoles are on the fish truck by accident, being caught up in the minnow Seines when they harvest their ponds...


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## Bearfootfarm (Jul 13, 2006)

Wolf mom said:


> This is *fascinating*.


I find it ribbiting. 
Ribbit 
Ribbit


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## phrogpharmer (Apr 25, 2005)

In 1985 I applied to the Dept. of Ag. in the state that we lived in at the time for a permit to raise Bullfrogs. I received a stern letter in reply, informing me that it was against the law to possess live Bullfrogs. There would be severe consequences in the form of fines and even jail time I was found to be in possession of live Bullfrogs, especially since I had been warned. I was also informed that Bullfrogs had been shown to be impossible to raise as farm animals. This was extremely frustrating for me because at the time we could hear Bullfrogs calling in the marshes by the airport on any summer evening.
I gave up, sort of. Actually, I complained, and whined, and griped for 2 years about how unfair it was that the state had squashed my plans.
My wife got fed up with my whiney attitude. She suggested that we quit our jobs and find a school where we could learn to raise aquatic animals and then find somewhere where they were legal. I knew 2 guys who worked at local fish hatcheries. They both had Bachelors degrees in Fisheries Biology. Neither of them had been taught how to raise fish while in school. I went to the local college library and spent a day researching Aquaculture (a new word for me at the time). I found 5 schools with 1 or 2 year vocational Aquaculture programs.
We gave our 2 weeks notice and a month later we hit the road to check out Aquaculture schools.


Now we had a way to feed the froglets live food. Early on we realized that it would be extremely difficult to make money by raising and selling an animal when you had to raise another animal to feed to the animal that you were selling. Not to mention how disagreeable it was to raise maggots (there I said it, the M word) using dead decaying fish as their food source.
After a few weeks I noticed that there weren't as many froglets in our concrete pond. Then I saw about 10 Magpies fly out of the pond when I pulled up one afternoon. We made a hoop house over the pond using 3/4 inch schedule 40 pvc and covered it with chicken wire. The wire kept the birds out but it wasn't mink proof. We closed it up better around the edges and the froglets were finally "protected" from predators. We had about 600 froglets left. It was October and getting colder. We covered the hoop house with clear plastic to hold the heat in (we had a small flow of geothermal water (27 c and 2 lpm). Now we were farming flies as well as Bullfrogs. Winter came and dragged on and we did too. Racoons broke in one night in February and we lost about 200 Bullfrogs to the Raccoons and almost lost our maggot generator and pupating box to the cold.
In March there were 350 Bullfrogs left, we began our quest to find a way to get our Bullfrogs (they weren't froglets anymore) to eat non-moving non-living food. 
We experienced failure after failure over and over and over trying everything we could think of to get them to eat. We had 2 total losses of our Bullfrog crop (unrelated to feed) as well as one total tadpole loss. We started over each time with new tadpoles and continued with our feeding experiments.
In 1993 we moved our operation to a new location a few minutes from our house. This really helped a lot and gave us more time to concentrate on finding a solution to the food problem. 
Finally my brilliant wife had an off the wall plan. It took a couple of days over a weekend to set it up and then several more days before I had time to try it. But, when I did a couple of Bullfrogs swallowed the pellets. I actually began to hyperventilate and had to sit down. I just sat there and watched as more and more of the Bullfrogs started eating our pellets.
I took off for home to tell my wife (pre-cellphone). I remember there was some kind weird news on the car radio about a slow-speed chase on the freeway in LA involving OJ Simpson.


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## goodatit (May 1, 2013)

one of the best and most informative stories i've ever read on here.


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## altair (Jul 23, 2011)

Pretty ingenious if you ask me. Around here, "frogging" was a practice for decades, going around catching wild frogs to use for medical purposes. I always felt sorry for that scenario for my own reasons. We have a decent-size pond on our property with all manner of small critters- minnows and green frogs, leopard frogs, and I'm pretty sure bullfrogs as well. We also get a fair number of harmless snakes dining on the amphibians. It's a great ecosystem to watch. I appreciate your sharing a bit of your lifestyle with the rest of us!


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## AmericanStand (Jul 29, 2014)

Lol it’s a good old page turner indeed !
I just can’t wait to find out how they solved the mystery at the end!


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## HDRider (Jul 21, 2011)

Bearfootfarm said:


> First you get a Mommy Frog and a Daddy frog............


You've never seen me eat frog legs.

My brother used to work at a fish farm. They could take all the bull frogs they wanted with a .22. Mom made some monster platters of frog legs


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## showmeonthedollwhere (Dec 19, 2019)

AmericanStand said:


> Lol it’s a good old page turner indeed !
> I just can’t wait to find out how they solved the mystery at the end!


OJ did it


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## Bearfootfarm (Jul 13, 2006)

HDRider said:


> You've never seen me eat frog legs.


I've been gigging and shooting them as long as I can remember.
When I was young, my next door neighbors had a pond and I could get all I wanted.
We'd also scout around and find farmers with ponds and offer to clear out the snakes for them if they would let us have the frogs.


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## phrogpharmer (Apr 25, 2005)

We spent 30 days on our road trip, taking a circuitous route on two lane roads, camping out mostly. We visited a college in WA, a college in OR, and a college in CA. Each school had a stream on campus where salmon spawned. The Aquaculture students trapped and spawned some of the fish. The eggs were incubated and hatched and the fry were raised in tubs and troughs in a small building, then stocked in small ponds outside and raised to smolts. The smolts were released into the stream and they made their way to the ocean. All well and good, except the students spent most of their time in general ed classes and (in my view) not enough time with fish.
We got home in late fall and decided to hang out for the winter and visit the other 2 schools in the spring.
Our second long winding road trip in the spring of 1988 took us to NM and another small building with aquariums and tubs, this time with ornamental fish and minnows. Again, mostly general ed classes.
On our way home we circled back through ID. At the college information office we were told that their 9 month Technical Certificate program was strictly vocational and hands-on for 6 hrs a day at the off campus fish hatchery plus a 3 credit computer class. Students were required to "volunteer" up to 20 hrs a month to run the fish hatchery from 3:00 to 5:00 on week days and from 8:00 to 5:00 on weekends. A real fish hatchery where students learned all aspects of cold water Aquaculture, from spawning to hauling fish to market. The college had 2 strains of commercial Rainbow Trout which had been developed at the school over the course of many years.
On our tour of the facilities I noticed 2 small troughs against the wall in the hatchery building. They had tiny black fish on the bottom swimming against the current. I asked about them and was told that they were Sturgeon and the school had just started a project to figure out how to raise them as a new Aquaculture species.
We went right back up to the main campus and I signed up for the coming fall semester. 
Back home we got lots of loose ends tied up, said goodbye to friends and family (who all thought we were crazy) and moved to Twin Falls on July 4th.


Happy Days! No more maggots! For the last few months I had been raising about 50 Kg of them a week (my wife had stopped dealing with maggot generators in 1991). Even though I was raising them in a separate little greenhouse and had transitioned them from morts to a commercial diet the previous year, they still had a unique, pungent, cloying smell that permeated my clothing in the few minutes that it took to feed them and empty the canisters of larvae into the feed bucket. I still had to strip off my clothes on the back porch when I got home from the farm.
After about 10 days it became apparent that only about 60% of the froglets and Bullfrogs were eating the pellets. Rather than start up the generators again, I decided to take the losses and move forward.

[In January 1989 while in the Aquaculture program I received a very nice and much needed scholarship from a large local feed company. I went to the mill to meet the president of the company and to thank him for his generosity and support. While we were talking in his office he asked me what I intended to do after graduation. I told him I was going to find a job and then start trying to figure out how to raise Bullfrogs. He said "they don't eat pellets". I told him "that's what everybody says but we're going to find a way". As I was leaving, he said "give me a call when you get them on pellets". He was the second person to see them eating pellets after our professor.]

By August we could see something was wrong. Some of the Bullfrogs were developing cloudy eyes, some had swollen digits, and some had skin lesions and pink webbing. Some had all three conditions. We suspected it had something to do with the feed.
I made and appointment to go see the company president.


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## HDRider (Jul 21, 2011)

Bearfootfarm said:


> I've been gigging and shooting them as long as I can remember.
> When I was young, my next door neighbors had a pond and I could get all I wanted.
> We'd also scout around and find farmers with ponds and offer to clear out the snakes for them if they would let us have the frogs.


One of my favorite eats


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## Wolf mom (Mar 8, 2005)

Aarg. What a place to stop the story! It's a cliff hanger!
And very well written.


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## phrogpharmer (Apr 25, 2005)

In Aquaculture, for record keeping purposes, the day that the animal starts eating is it's "date of birth" or date of first feed. This is because most Aquaculture species are poikilothermic. The egg development, the incubation time, and the time from hatch to first feed can be manipulated with temperature. Throw into this mix (literally) external fertilization of the eggs (spawning) and you have animals whose entire life can be closely regulated with temperature and feed.
Bullfrogs are amphibians and their culture is further complicated by the fact that they have a larval stage. Larvae are baby animals that don't resemble the adults in any way. Like maggots and flies.
Bullfrogs are essentially two different animals. fully aquatic herbivores and semi-aquatic carnivores. There are a lot of factors in the culture of the larvae that can influence the growth and health of the animal once it has morphed into the adult form.
Yes, we had adults on pellets but we were a long way from having a new species of farm animal.


A few days before my visit with the president/owner of the feed company, I had taken several Bullfrogs that exhibited the signs (previously mentioned) into the company's fish pathologist. In those days the the company had a disease diagnostics lab that offered free services to their customers. The disease lab was part of a complex that included a large commercial fish hatchery where diets were tested, a wet lab where studies were conducted with fish and invertebrates, and a water quality lab.
Examination of the morbid Bullfrogs by the pathologist showed that they were hosts to a variety of internal parasites but their outward signs were probably not caused by disease organisms. The parasites were no surprise since since our Bullfrogs were from wild-caught tadpoles, they had previously been eating maggots, and we were using creek water to cool the geothermal water that we raised them in.
The president took me down to the mill and asked the manager and the nutritionist to provide me with whatever I requested in the way of feed or ingredients so that my wife and I could conduct feed trials at our farm. She and I were very familiar with feed trials from the work that we had done with the sturgeon.
We set up the trials using the original trout pellets as the control and started with 4 new diet formulations. Bullfrogs aren't trout, their nutrient requirements are different. Some time and quite a few diets later we had worked out the problems of the swollen digits and the lesions/hemorrhages and our Bullfrogs now had a better feed conversion ratio than Rainbow Trout. We still use pretty much the same feeding regimen with our Bullfrogs today. The cloudy eyes turned out to be a mechanical issue.
Several years later we began our efforts to develop a nutritious commercial diet and feeding protocols for the tadpoles. This proved to be more difficult and took longer to accomplish.


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## HDRider (Jul 21, 2011)

Wolf mom said:


> Aarg. What a place to stop the story! It's a cliff hanger!
> And very well written.


He's the Louis L'Amour of bullfrogs


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## altair (Jul 23, 2011)

I want to know what idea his brilliant wife had to get them to eat pellets.


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## bobp (Mar 4, 2014)

It's a damn good story.....you should gather your thoughts and bind it up.....theres small publishers around....


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## markt1 (Dec 15, 2013)

Ahhhhhhh. Don't stop! Please continue the story. How did you get them to eat pellets?


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## HDRider (Jul 21, 2011)

I can't wait to find out how to get restaurant quantities


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## AmericanStand (Jul 29, 2014)

I would like to know how they got them to eat anything besides live food


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## Bearfootfarm (Jul 13, 2006)

HDRider said:


> I can't wait to find out how to get restaurant quantities


First you get a Mommy Frog and a Daddy frog............


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## phrogpharmer (Apr 25, 2005)

I need to back track a little.
In early spring 1993 we moved our operation to a Tilapia farm closer to our house. We set up in an empty 20' circular (one of 11) that are made from Harvestore silo sections. they have concrete floors, a central drain, and 2" pvc cold and warm water supply pipes with a valve on each pipe. These circulars are about 5' deep and stick out of the ground about 1'.
First thing we did was build a staircase to the bottom. We then brought in 5 small plastic cattle troughs and set them up on stands made from 4X4 fence posts and 2X4s so that the top of the troughs were about 3' off the floor. We ran 2 1" pvc lines about 4' up from the floor around the inside perimeter of the of the circular with a T and a valve on each line for each trough. We also
put 6 kiddie pools on the floor with Ts and valves. We hooked up the 1" lines to the 2" pipes and had warm and cold water to each trough and pool. We made standpipes for the trough drains to control the water levels and side drains for the pools. Everything drained onto the floor and down the central drain. The last step was to build a dome with a 3/4" schedule 40 pvc frame and cover it with chicken wire. It was pretty cramped for space, especially with the maggot generators in there too.
We brought our froglets, Bullfrogs, and tadpoles in from the other place, putting the tadpoles in the kiddie pools and the froglets, and Bullfrogs in the troughs. We had ourselves a pilot project.
About 2 weeks later the floor was covered with algae and I had a pretty serious slip and fall. We had to consolidate all the drains into 4" pipe and route the effluent water directly to the central drain. It wasn't as slick after that.
Towards the end of the summer all the tadpoles had morphed and we had over 2000 froglets and Bullfrogs. We replaced the Kiddie pools with more troughs. We also domed another circular and set it up for maggot production. We had been working on a commercial maggot feed for a while and were able to phase out the morts in the new dome.


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## Wolf mom (Mar 8, 2005)

Your descriptions are so easy to picture.....


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## phrogpharmer (Apr 25, 2005)

A few weeks after getting the Bullfrogs to eat pellets, I placed a classified ad in Reptile and Amphibian Magazine. I thought our market would be for pet Bullfrogs. Our ad ended with "We Have The Bugs Worked Out Of Our Bullfrogs". We sold about a dozen Bullfrogs to 4 or 5 customers. Our first customer was a woman in VT who bought 2. I renewed the ad and we were in the Bullfrog business. We were shipping with UPS. A few months later a customer in WI received their 2 Bullfrogs frozen solid and dead. They called very upset and wanted their money back, I quickly complied. They had also contacted the SPCA. This caused problems for us with UPS, who didn't want to get involved with animal cruelty issues. UPS didn't cut us off, but said they would if it happened again.
During this time I found out about another Bullfrog farmer in Duson, LA. He was feeding his Bullfrogs crawfish heads with a turn table. He was getting the heads from a processing plant. A very nice older gentleman who had been raising Bullfrogs for many years.
He didn't believe me when I told him ours were eating pellets, especially when I wouldn't reveal our secret. I asked him how he packaged his Bullfrogs for shipping and he told me to order some and find out. So I did. His Bullfrogs were lean and very excitable with very large back legs compared to ours. They wouldn't even look at our pellets. I sent him some of ours with some pellets and he called me to report that they ate the pellets "like candy" and liked crawfish heads too. He was surprised by how fat and calm ours were. His market was supplying frog legs to Bullfrog celebrations and to a biological supply company. We adapted his packaging methods to our purposes. We kept in regular contact for years until he died in 2015.
Towards the end of the year we got a phone call from a medical school about supplying Bullfrogs to be used for teaching microsurgery techniques. We sent them 20 Bullfrogs (our largest order up to that point). Their lab director called a couple weeks later to tell us how impressed she was with their vigor and calm demeanor. She also reported that most of them had survived the surgery and were healing, something that was very uncommon. She wanted 20 more. 
A light bulb came on over our heads. We had some flyers printed with some basic information and a photo of my wife in her lab coat holding a Bullfrog on each open hand. We sent the flyers to 20 or so medical schools and universities. We got some more orders. It had been obvious with that first "big order" that it was almost as easy to box up and ship 20 Bullfrogs as it was to box and ship 2 Bullfrogs. We edged our way out of the pet trade.
While all this was happening, the Tilapia farm got a new manager and he had some ideas on how to increase Tilapia production. Our apple cart was about to be run into a ditch.


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## AmericanStand (Jul 29, 2014)

Hummm I like the story but are we going being led up the path to a sales pitch ?


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## Alice In TX/MO (May 10, 2002)

Only if you are running a science lab. 

Details, AS. Details.


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## phrogpharmer (Apr 25, 2005)

No sales pitch. At almost $51.00 a pound most individuals can't afford them.
We work as much as we want and make as much as we need.


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## AmericanStand (Jul 29, 2014)

Wow that seems pricey!


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## Alice In TX/MO (May 10, 2002)

BULL FROGS! Git yur full growed mitey fine bull frogs rite cheer.


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## fishhead (Jul 19, 2006)

Good story PP. Well written too!


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## phrogpharmer (Apr 25, 2005)

Several years ago my son who is an Emergency Medicine Physician told us that we could charge way more for our Bullfrogs. The cost of the Bullfrogs represents a tiny fraction of the money that the drug companies, medical schools, universities, and Federal Government spend on the research that they are used for. 
Most of our customers don't tell us what type of research/treatments our Bullfrogs are being used for. They know and we know that disease free, pathogen free, parasite free laboratory grade Bullfrogs don't grow on trees. They also know that only we can provide "cookie cutter" Bullfrogs, exactly like the ones used in their research last month or last year or 5 years ago.
We do know our Bullfrogs are currently being used for research/treatments on, glaucoma, heart disease, dementia, deafness, circulatory disease, genetic disorders, and several types of cancer; diseases and conditions that affect everyone's family, ours included.
We know we could charge more for our Bullfrogs than we do.


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## phrogpharmer (Apr 25, 2005)

Thanks Fishhead,
Your comment means a lot to me.
You know more about us than anybody here.


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## bobp (Mar 4, 2014)

Well written......please continue!.......


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## phrogpharmer (Apr 25, 2005)

The 2 circulars that we were using for our pilot project were on the end of a long row of empty circulars. They had proven to be too big and too deep in the ground to easily raise Tilapia in and harvest Tilapia from. They had been empty for years when we arrived.
In spring of 1995 we were using the troughs in the first circular for our feed trials and had moved 1000 Bullfrogs into the former maggot circular. These Bullfrogs were on the floor in shallow water. They were restricted to about 2/3 of the floor space by panels that we made using a 1" X 2" furring strip framework with feed sack plastic stapled to it. This kept them away from the staircase and allowed us access to all of the rearing area using long handled brushes and long handled dip nets. We had replaced the clear plastic dome covering with a hay tarp to restrict the sunlight to reduce the algae growth.
Things were working nicely with this set-up and we were having some results with a couple of our new feed formulations. We had plans to dome the next circular in line and fill it with tadpoles.
The new Tilapia farm manager had been in charge for a few months. He was dissatisfied with the way that he had been taught to spawn and raise Tilapia by the previous manager. He had some ideas of his own and thought he could double production with less time and effort,"Quick And Dirty".
He was a 1986 graduate of the same program as us and had been working for a large corporation on one of their many Rainbow 
Trout farms. He was very bright but a total square peg and hadn't lined up well with the corporate way. My wife had been working for the same corporation on a different large farm since 1991 and we both knew and liked him.
For his unorthodox plans to work he needed "our" circulars. We volunteered to move our operation before he had to ask us to. 
We knew of another place on the very large property. It was going to take a lot of work but would be out of the way of the Tilapia operation.


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## phrogpharmer (Apr 25, 2005)

The new location was a tropical fish farm. It consisted of 2 rows of 6 4'X6'X2', a row of 6 4'X10'X2', and another row of 6 5'X12'X2' holes in the ground. The guy who had last raised tropicals there had retired in 1992 and it had sat unused since. The holes were were half full of drifted sand and the weeds were so big and plentiful that it was hard to discern the layout when looking down on it from the top of a small rise next to it.
It had been built in 1978 by first laying out the 3" ABS drain lines, then constructing a wooden box over each drain hole


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## phrogpharmer (Apr 25, 2005)

Then back filling half way up the boxes at which point the 3/4" pvc supply lines were installed, 1 line and a valve for each box. It was completed by back filling with dirt to the top of the boxes.There was a warm water line from the artesian well and a cold water line from the creek that met at a manifold where the water could be mixed to get the desired temperature, then distributed to all the boxes/pens. All this was done by 1 guy in his mid 60s with hand tools, a shovel, and a wheel barrow (no electricity at this site).
It took us over a month laboring after work and on weekends to get all the dirt and weeds out of the holes and drains and to repair and replace the broken supply lines. The supply lines had been shut off and the water in them had frozen and split the pipes in many places. (Since 1993 I had been arriving at the Bullfrogs at 5:30 am every week day to get the chores done in time to make it to work by 8:00).
We built a frame around the top of each pen using 2X6 lumber and used heavy UV resistant plastic sheeting to line the pens and put in standpipes to control the water depth. We then attached a hinged top made with 2X4 framing and chicken wire to each pen. When we finished, the tops of the pens were about 10" above the dirt and we could sit on the top of one pen while working in the pen next to it.
We moved all of the Bullfrogs to their new "safe" homes in June. They were protected from all the predators that we knew of at the time. I may mention snakes and people later.
We deconstructed our domes and cleared out the circulars to make way for the new Tilapia setup. The pvc pipe from the dome framework had become permanently curved and was useless as water pipe.
In July we were able to seine a total of about 6000 tadpoles from 3 locations and stocked them in the 6 5'X12'X2' pens.
We were back to our efforts to develop a new farm animal.


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## HDRider (Jul 21, 2011)

fishhead said:


> Good story PP. Well written too!


Great story. Riveting.

Very well written, and inspiring to anyone who might want to pursue any type of commercial endeavor.


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## bobp (Mar 4, 2014)

As a person who's lived with the negativity and criticism of friends, family, and many others about pursuing a dream to farm, and choosing to do so in a non orthodoxial approach. I can appreciate your struggles and find your story riveting.


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## HDRider (Jul 21, 2011)

Ribbetting


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## Vahomesteaders (Jun 4, 2014)

Awesome tale. Looking forward to more.


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## phrogpharmer (Apr 25, 2005)

The day after we saw the Bullfrogs eating pellets, I asked our Animal Husbandry professor from the Aquaculture Program to come see. After watching them for a few minutes, he told us that after 5 years we had taken the first step up what would be a tall ladder.
He also checked out our circular greenhouse buzzing with House Flies and pumping out over 100 pounds of larvae a week. He said "you've turned House Flies into a farm animal, you can do it with Bullfrogs too". He pointed out that we had been breeding a specific species of animal for many generations, in an enclosed environment, with a commercially produced diet that we had developed, and were producing an enormous amount of animals. He was more impressed with our House Fly success than he was with Bullfrogs eating pellets. 
Our professor also told us that it was important to apply for a commercial rearing license from the State Dept. of Agriculture before we sold or shipped any Bullfrogs.
I called the State Veterinarian the next day. We already knew him because he was closely following our efforts with the White Sturgeon. He mailed us the paper work so that we would be legal to raise and sell American Bullfrogs (Rana catesbeiana). I didn't mention (Mosca domestica).


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## AmericanStand (Jul 29, 2014)

How did you get them to eat pellets ?


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## phrogpharmer (Apr 25, 2005)

In our area, wild Bullfrogs spawn in late spring/early summer, a fairly narrow window of about 45 days.
The resulting tadpoles grow over the summer. In late summer/early fall some of the tadpoles will morph into froglets at a medium size. The majority of the tadpoles will overwinter, continuing to eat and grow slowly under the ice. In spring, as the water warms, the tadpole's activity picks up and they grow quickly to a large size and morph into froglets in midsummer.
Our efforts to capture summer tadpoles by seining resulted in a variety of tadpole sizes and developmental stages. After hauling them back to our farm, we gently and slowly screened the tadpoles through 2 sizes of plastic mesh and ended up with small, medium, and large tadpoles. They would be stocked into their tanks based on size.
There were usually some with 4 legs and smaller tails as well as some froglets in the seine. These would have to be separated right away, otherwise they would stress out and drown in the haul tank on the way to the farm.
The large tadpoles would morph into froglets within a month of capture. The mediums would grow to a fairly large size and be all morphed within about 2 months. The small tadpoles would grow to about medium size and morph also within 2 months. For a long time we were unable to get captured tadpoles to overwinter.
The tadpole's chopped veggie diet was a problem. The uneaten portion was a mess to clean out of the tanks and since the tadpoles would hide in the uneaten food and waste, it was time consuming to separate them. It was also time consuming to go to the store to pick up the food and chop it into tiny pieces. This diet could also vary quite a bit depending on what was getting tossed out.
In 1995 with our new setup, we started feed trials with the tadpoles using raw ingredient mixtures from the feed mill, while still doing feed trials with the Bullfrogs and froglets. I must note that the feed mill manufactured feed for all types of farm animals, poultry, pets, and 6 or 7 types of fish. We had a wide array of ingredients to work with and took full advantage of it.
In 1996 we had a spawn from a pair of our own Bullfrogs.


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## phrogpharmer (Apr 25, 2005)

In early 1996 I attended a conference/seminar for small farm/business start-ups to explore financing, management, mentoring, marketing, etc. There were about 15 attendees and about the same number of presenters.
At the start of the conference each attendee was asked to stand up and describe their plans. There were people looking to start a sheep dairy, a goat dairy, a lavender farm, a berry vineyard, several organic vegetable farms, an herb and spice farm, and others that I can't remember. I was the only one who was actually farming and selling a product (we had raised and sold about 500 bullfrogs in 1995).
At the end of the day, an SBA and a USDA representative approached me and encouraged me to apply for loans and/or grants. They made it sound so easy. 
A short while later, I was talking with a fish farmer colleague and he told me that he had gotten a grant to make improvements and increase production on his geothermal Channel Catfish/Tilapia farm, (a considerable sum).
I talked to my professor about getting a grant and he explained that we had reached a fork in the road. We could accept public money to improve the farm and increase production and make more money. Or, we could keep scrounging for equipment and keep operating on a shoestring and slowly build up our farm and business. He said the easier way would be to take the free public money -but- if we did we couldn't in good faith have any secrets or proprietary information. We would be obligated to the public to reveal all. On the other hand if we continued to scrimp and make do and finance our endeavor on our own, everything we discovered and learned was ours. We could elect to share it, or not, on our own terms. We chose the hard slow way.

We had been trying to get wild-caught Bullfrogs to spawn in captivity since 1990 with no success. We had also gathered freshly spawned eggs from a pond on several occasions, but no matter how gently we collected, transported, and acclimated them, they had always turned white within a day of moving them to our facility.
Needless to say we were quite excited to see that after 10 days of getting to know each other, 1 pair of our 2 year old Bullfrogs had produced eggs, (we had set up 6 pairs in 6 chambers in one of our large pens). Over the course of 5 days about half of the eggs developed into tiny tadpoles the size and shape of a comma on a printed page. They drifted away from the gelatinous spawn material and stuck/sucked themselves to the sides of the pen. 8 days from spawn they were free swimming. We decided this was analogous to "swim up" in fish culture. We had previously removed all of the Bullfrogs and the dividers when we had seen that the eggs were developing into embryos.
When we had set up the spawning chambers we had also started a separate greenwater pen just in case we got successful spawning. When the tadpoles started swimming, we began feeding them greenwater which by then was thick and rich, almost syrupy. The tadpoles began to grow at a fast pace.
In the mean time the Tilapia manager with his "Quick And Dirty' methods had blown through the production ceiling established by the previous manager. He needed a lot more space to raise the large numbers of fish coming on. This would have unforeseen consequences down the road for our Bullfrogs.


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## AmericanStand (Jul 29, 2014)

Did I catch that right ?
frogs will drown when hauled ?


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## phrogpharmer (Apr 25, 2005)

Bullfrog morphs and froglets are very delicate. They will stress out, go into shock, and die with hardly any provocation. This is the major bottleneck in production if you don't know what you're doing.


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## phrogpharmer (Apr 25, 2005)

Our cold water intake was a screened 6" pipe on a creek about 300 yards away from our Bullfrogs. This creek originated at the outflow of a large trout farm about 1/2 mile upstream from our intake pipe. The cold water for the trout farm came from 2 12" pipes that brought the cold water from a spring that is about 1/2 mile uphill from the trout raceways. 20' downstream from our intake pipe the creek flows into a headbox where the cold water is mixed with warm artesian well water and then flows through a long series of concrete raceways where Tilapia are raised.
The fish farm manager was out of room for Tilapia. He converted the trout raceways to Tilapia production by running warm water from the well to the headbox of the raceways and mixing it with the spring water. Within a few months he doubled the swimming inventory of Tilapia.
This change over from Rainbow Trout to Tilapia made sense. Tilapia feed is cheaper, they grow faster, they are easier to raise, and they sell for more than Rainbow Trout.
These changes raised the temperature of the creek but we were able to compensate by adjusting the valves at our manifold.


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## Wolf mom (Mar 8, 2005)

Ah, but there's nothing like a fresh caught Rainbow for dinner!


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## AmericanStand (Jul 29, 2014)

As a young man I learned how to quickly fillet salmon.
I used to think I was fast because I could fillet a couple hundred in a hour. 
Then one day I had the chance to watch my girlfriend at work at the cannery.
She was at least three times as fast and could keep up that pace for a 12 hour shift!
Anyhow it was fun when catching a fresh salmon with my out-of-state relatives to hold it up and take the pictures then fillet it and have it in the pan before they put their fishing rod down.


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## phrogpharmer (Apr 25, 2005)

Our little creek was home to lots of large Rainbow Trout that started as small escapees from the upstream raceways.
The trout died out when the water warmed up and were replaced by Tilapia which move upstream every fall as the water cools.


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## phrogpharmer (Apr 25, 2005)

My 2 sons started helping out at the farm for a month during the summers in 1994. We also toured lots of fish facilities during those summers. 
In the summer of 1996 we had the seined tadpoles installed in their respective pens and had our first batch of homegrown tadpoles on feed. The Bullfrogs were doing well and we had their diet pretty well worked out.
My sons had been thinking while doing chores about doing things an easier way. They had seen fish farms where Rainbow Trout, Brook Trout, Tiger Muskie, White Sturgeon, Channel Catfish, Blue Catfish, all sorts of tropical fish, Tilapia, and minnows were raised in flow-through culture systems using fairly standard Aquaculture practices.They noted that we were raising our tadpoles using similar methods. Tadpoles aren't fish. They had some ideas for some different rearing strategies to cut down on the work and to see if we could get the tadpoles to grow to a larger size before they morphed. Larger tadpoles morph into larger froglets which are easier to get on feed, are easier to care for, and are more hardy. We set up a row of pens to try out their theories.
After about a month, all the large captured tadpoles had morphed as usual. The medium and small tadpoles were getting bigger and their back legs were getting big.
In the experimental row the large tadpoles were about 50% morphed out. The medium and small tadpoles were much larger than their counterparts in the other rows and their back legs for the most part were still quite small. 
We switched all of the tadpole pens over to the new practices. For the first time we headed into the fall with tadpoles.


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## phrogpharmer (Apr 25, 2005)

After a year our home-grown tadpoles were quite large. The wild-caught tadpoles that we over-wintered were also quite large but not as big on average as our home-growns.
One pair of Bullfrogs out of 12 pairs that we set aside had spawned. We also had quite a few captured wild tadpoles.
The feed trials had yielded some clear cut results and we had put all of the tadpoles on the mix that produced the most robust tadpoles. 
By midsummer, all of our over-wintered tadpoles were morphing into froglets and it was a bit of a scramble to sort them into the pens by size and origin.
Our 1 and 2 year Bullfrogs started having increased morts. Examination by the fish pathologist revealed that they had Red Leg Syndrome, a bacterial disease caused by Aeromonas hydrophila. He recommended medicated fish feed to get the infection under control. Upon feeding the medicated pellets to the Bullfrogs, there was an immediate reaction. The Bullfrogs spit out the pellets and wiped their tongue off with their hand. I tasted the pellets and had the same reaction. They had a very strong medicinally bitter taste. We tried coating the pellets with a flavored attractant supplied to us by the feed mill. The Bullfrogs gulped the masked pellets down but after about 15 minutes they regurgitated the pellets and in some cases they regurgitated their whole stomach, washed it off, and reswallowed it (Bullfrogs can do this). We were at a loss as to how to get the Bullfrogs to take their medicine. The morts were increasing. 
I fired up some new maggot generators (we had thrown out the originals 3 years before). We got the maggots started on maggot mix and then added the antibiotic to it a couple of days before pupation. Fortunately, the maggots weren't as picky about the taste. The surviving Bullfrogs(we had lost about half to Red Leg at that point) ate the gut-loaded maggots and the morts began to decrease. 3 weeks after the diagnosis of Red Leg we were left with about 40% of our original stock. Amazingly the yearlings and froglets hadn't got sick.
We tracked down the source of the infection to our "cold" water. Aeromonas grows very well in warm conditions. After the switch from Rainbow Trout to Tilapia production upstream from our intake, the water temperature of the creek had risen and by midsummer the temperature was just right for Aeromonas.
Treating the Bullfrogs with antibiotics was a temporary solution. We had to eliminate the underlying cause of the infection or we could expect recurring infections every time the water warmed up to the Aeromonas temperature. The only real fix was to put in an underground pipeline nearly 1/2 mile to tap directly into the clean cold spring water (a very expensive undertaking). We would also have to find an alternative to the plastic sheeting that we used to line the in-ground pens. The folds and creases in the plastic sheeting harbored infectious organisms and were impossible to disinfect.
At about this time a colleague in the Aquaculture industry introduced us to a wonderful couple who were in the process of building the worlds largest recirculating Tilapia farm in another state. They wanted to incorporate Bullfrogs for food production into this farm. We gave them a tour of our little farm and they made a proposal to pay a sum up front and to pay a percentage of gross food Bullfrog sales from their company in exchange for our pellet training apparatus. We worked out a 15 year non-compete non-disclosure contract. 
I will continue this narrative from 2013.


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## phrogpharmer (Apr 25, 2005)

Our 15 year agreement expired at the end of 2013. The largest recirculating Tilapia farm was built and operated by our benefactors for several years and then sold for a profit. The Bullfrog project that they set up in conjunction with the Tilapia didn't work out. There were issues with Bullfrog health as a result of raising them in Tilapia recirc water. (We fully disclosed our problems with Bullfrog health and Tilapia water before the contract was drawn up). There were also major regulatory roadblocks initiated by the county and state where their farm was located.
We installed 1/2 mile of buried pipe to the clean cold spring water and repaired and replaced several sections of the warm water pipe to the well. 
We replaced all of the in-ground pens with large fiberglass troughs and circulars, each with a latched and locked top and a cold water and warm water tap. We can control the flow and temperature of each trough and circular individually. 
The Red Leg Syndrome ended with the installation of the clean cold water line. The parasites were eliminated when we stopped bringing in wild-caught tadpoles and Bullfrogs. We have been producing our own selected Bullfrog strains for 11 generations. Every aspect of our Bullfrog production from spawn, to hatch, to morphing, and raising from small to Super Jumbo size is carefully controlled with temperature and with our proprietary feed. 
We turned a wild species into a domesticated farm animal.
I retired from my full time job in 2015. 
I spend several hours a day discovering new things with the Bullfrogs (its not work). I also spend 10 to 15 hours a week with the Bullfrog business which I consider to be work.
It is gratifying to know that our Bullfrogs and or efforts are helping to overcome human diseases and medical conditions. It is also very gratifying to know that every year our purpose-bred farm-raised Bullfrogs are preventing thousands of wild frogs from being captured and used in labs and research facilities. We also provide a few for pond stocking in states where they are legal.

Some people believe that frog farming might be an easy way to make money and they want to know how to start a frog farm. 
This is how to have a successful farm:

1) Get good hands-on training in commercial Aquaculture.
2) Start with a few animals and the life cycle research.
3) Set up a system that fits you and your animals.
4) Get your permits and join your local farmer organization.
5) Raise the highest quality animals.
6) Develop your markets and give good customer service.
7) Practice sustainable agriculture.
8) Take classes in business management and hire a good accountant.

There are plenty of wild animal and plant species waiting to reward ambition, skill, and hard work with a unique, interesting, and profitable farm business.


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## HDRider (Jul 21, 2011)

You should write a book.


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## Wolf mom (Mar 8, 2005)

Checking daily for an update......


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## Grandmotherbear (May 15, 2002)

I know it's old but its interesting.I try to raise my tadpoles that live in my water gardens to adults, figuring they will help control the insect problems. I found that at some point the largest tadpoles began cannibalizing the smallest. I bought tetramin flaked fish food and feed them every other day or so, plus encouraging duckweed to cover the surface of the water, to keep their water cooler and to cut down on mosquito larvae. Tetra min is too expensive to depend on. I bet if I had access to bullfrog chow it would be much less expense, but I doubt that I could use even 1/4 pound in a year.


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## bourbonred (Feb 27, 2008)

Thank you so much for sharing. I truly admire your tenacity and willingness to do something counter to what has always been done.


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## dwfendley (Dec 19, 2020)

I am a hatchery biologist at a state fish hatchery. I'm new to this site, but this was a very interesting read! My hat is off to you for a truly remarkable accomplishment!


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