Frog disease?

[honeybee]

Is there a frog disease about? Heard vague mention of something a while ago. There's a pond near the Severn and last year we saw quite a few dead frogs, belly-up in the pond (around the edge where you could see). There are about 4 visible dead ones at the moment. The pond isn't obviously polluted although the water doesn't look A1 condition and the cows drink and wade in it but they're not out yet. Any ideas?

[badgerwatcher]

The same thing happened a couple of years ago in our local park. I never found out what had caused it. All the frogs were dead around the edge of the pond.

[Lords and Ladies]

Could be a number of things as outlined here - dying frogs

The disease you're probably thinking of is 'Red Leg' -ranavirus

You could check the dead ones for signs of sores/redness.

[m1keanderson]

Froglife - conserving native frogs, toads, newts, lizards, snakes is a website for a national wildlife charity. they have just published a downloadable advice sheet "on common causes of amphibian mortality in gardens. It also includes information on amphibian disease including symptoms and advice on how to proceed if you notice it."

There are a number of common causes for frogs to die in numbers; from extreme temperatures in spring which will kill over-wintering males to red leg disease. Red leg disease is infectious and is why frogs or spawn should not be transferred between ponds (I seem to remember that 99.9% of tadpoles won't make it out of the water and then 99.9% of those that do won't make it to maturity to spawn so it may appear that you'll be overrun with frogs but in reality it's unlikely). There's also the risk of transferring invasive non-native pond plants. But that's getting off the subject of this thread so I'll leave it there.

[m1keanderson]

Originally Posted by Lords and Ladies

Could be a number of things as outlined here - dying frogs

The disease you're probably thinking of is 'Red Leg' -ranavirus

You could check the dead ones for signs of sores/redness.

Great minds think alike...

[solus]

Umm - not quite sure how to explain this delicately, but the chances are the dead frogs have been er.... "bonked" to death! I fished two corpses out of my own garden pond this morning, having first noticed them several days ago. You may or may not have noticed that when frogs mate, a number of males cling tightly on to one female in desperation to be the one that fertilises her eggs and this sometimes results in the poor lass being drowned! This year I saw the frirst "joined up" frogs in the pond on 31st January, with the first clump of spawn appearing on 12th February.

[honeybee]

thanks for all your replies... will try and fish one out to check for signs of disease. As for your reply Solus... that is a possibility in this case as although the pond gets shallow at the edges it is quite steep sided.

[honeybee]

Just to go back to this... the frogs in question showed no obvious signs of disease. A few days later there was loads of frogs spawn so I guess they were probably suffocated . Good news is, went to the pond today and it is black with tadpoles. Hopefully some will survive as there are lots of predators.