Advice please - how to save 8 gallons of frogspawn???

[patandchickens]

Just so you know, it is NORMAL for frogs to lay a bunch of clutches of eggs in places where there is just no hope whatsoever of them surviving. Unless this is a particularly endangered species or you just want a hobby, there is really little point in trying to rescue the doomed ones.

That said, there is nothing much actually *wrong* with it (the worst you can say is encourages the genius genotype that decided that was a good oviposition site in the first place... but that is certainly not entirely genetically controlled so it is not a huge deal) and can be a nice act of kindness I suppose.

Your garden bathtub is likely to be a good place IF it is fairly slimy and green already. Natural wet areas would be better, but the bathtub may ranch some of them up ok.

I would suggest not putting too many in, as your best bet is to have them grow as fast as possible and get out before anything bad happens to them like summer heat or the bathtub tipping over or carnivorous insects colonizing the bathtub. I am trying to remember the stocking densities we used to use in grad school, using 4' or 6' diameter 2-3' deep stock tanks as experimental ponds.... that was too long ago and I do not feel like digging out a copy of old dissertation or reprints to make sure, but I am pretty sure it was something on the order of 200 tadpoles of a "full sized" (not treefrog) frog species being few enough to avoid major effects of competition for food. Your bathtub is smaller so you would want to scale down accordingly. Better to err on the side of too few than too many.

Also you need to realize that if you successfully ranch up dozens or hundreds of froglets in your backyard, you will then HAVE dozens or hundreds of juvenile frogs hanging around your backyard -- they often take quite a while to disperse -- which can make mowing the lawn a pretty gruesome experience if you are looking too closely. Hopefully you have suitable habitat nearby for the adults to live in, if these egg masses were laid on your property, but IME having a bunch of metamorphs disperse from a "new" pond really DOES tend to increase the immediately-local frog population for at least a while so make sure that is something you want.

Good luck, have fun,

Pat

 

[Gypsy07]

Well, to be fair to the frogs, this particular site has been waterlogged for a good few years, ever since an old field drain collapsed and the water couldn't drain into the nearby stream. Last summer my boyfriend dug up the field and put in a new drain, so now it's only going to be wet in the winter. Maybe the frogs were just going by their experiences of the past few years, in which case their poor choice of location was actually our fault, so I feel almost duty bound to try and rectify the problem.

We have a farm (beef cattle, silage fields and horses as paying guests), and the 'pond' we drained is at the bottom of one of our fields and only about 20 yards away from the stream that runs along all of our fields. The bathtub I moved the spawn to is in the same field and only about 70 yards away from the stream, so if they do grow up successfully, they'll be right next to a fairly suitable environment. We don't have a garden near there so the frogs will be safe from lawnmowers apart from when we're cutting silage later in the year, probably August, and hopefully the they will have moved on by then...

As for whether I'd want them in my garden, well, I'd be delighted to have frogs! I don't really like formal tidy gardens, they look too fussy for my tastes and I much prefer the kinda wilderness and wildlife type of garden. And I REALLY like frogs.

Thanks for your advice. I've tried not to overstock the bathtub, and I think I'll be able to find a few more boggy spots around our fields to put the rest of the spawn. I may ask my boyfriend to dig a big hole down near the stream and divert some water for a permanent pond. That would be great. A frog sanctuary, LOL!

 

[Baymule]

Don't worry about the frog population explosion, I didn't get tons of froggies hopping about the donkey pen. They dispersed and went about their business of being frogs. It will help with the bug population and excess froggies will in turn, be food for something else. So you can look at it that you are helping to provide a gourmet frog leg dinner for a hungry predator. Nothing goes to waste in Mother Nature. I love the tub idea. Makes me want to call all froggies back to the donkey pen for a romantic rendevous.

 

[Baymule]

Ah, you drained the field. That explains it. Frogs are rather much like salmon, they go back to where they were spawned to lay their eggs. Soooo........it looks like Frog Mommy will be your new nickname.

I can see it now......printed on your T-shirt.