Frog Spawn

[Jo-grez]

Last spring I was going to collect a load of frog spawn to let the kids watch them grow in frogs< but then i wondered if it was actually legal to do it anymore.

Anyway, before I got round to it, the local pond was virtually empty so I left the remainder behind and decided not to bother.

So if i go out next spring and see some will it be ok to scoop up a cupfull and bring them home?

[fbcpmike]

I would have to say that all our amphibian species are protected so technically you should not do this, but......

There is also a disease in frogs (and toads) called "red leg disease" where they get an infection that causes deformaties and lesions that manifests as a red discolouration, the condition is fatal. Currently the casuse is not defined but it can be spread by moving idividuals from pond to pond (taking them home to develop and then releasing them).

Having said this you would need to be caught taking the spawn. The tank you keep them in needs to have an area above the water line that the developing frogs to climb out onto as the can actually drown !. Food is going to be more difficult as they will have to be supplied with food that they would naturally find in their environments, water fleas, green algae etc, you would have to transport this in on a regular basis. They will eat fish food though and tadpoles love snails.

By far the best would be to have your own pond and stock it if they don't find it naturally which they will. We dug our own pond, frogs, newts, damselflies, dragonflies all colonised it within a year, we had over 30 frogs & 30 newts breeding last year some 3 years later, and we are in an estate of 100 houses surrounded by roads..

[catalaze]

So far as the Common Frog Rana temporaria is concerned, you can collect some spawn providing that you have the consent of the landowner and that you do not try to sell it. However, don't take loads and don't take whole spawn clumps! There are around a 1000 embryos in a clump of frogspawn - a dozen or two would be enough for children to watch tadpoles grow. The reason why you should never remove entire clumps is that in doing so you remove ALL the offspring of a frog pair, leaving the pond minus an entire genotype. Frogs have a hard enough time without that. Tease off a spoonful of the fertilised eggs, no more. You'll need to arrange care, too: you want a small glass tank of pond water ready, somewhere it won't freeze or heat up and food for them when they hatch. Fresh tapwater is not good: the chlorine can kill. Tadders will eat lettuce that has been plunged in boiling water (then cooled) and will nibble the odd freshwater fish food tablet. You need to change the water if it shows any signs of becoming cloudy, so don't overfeed. If they don't finish what you've given them, you've given them too much. Some cover in the form of plants will be appreciated.

As soon as the tadpoles develop legs, you must put them back at the edge of the pond because then they live only on TINY LIVE ANIMALS - usually flies.

If you want to do this, get hold of a low powered microscope or at least a decent magnifying lens. Take spawn as fresh as possible and the children will then see the amazing sight of the first few cleavages of the fertilised egg.

[Airehead]

Never mind 'law', Jo-grez. Advice given above is good so go and do it! I believe that the only truly meaningful lessons for children, the ones that stick throughout their lives, are the ones that involve participation. There are too many telly experts, government departments and anti-this and thats telling us what we must not do. Everybody used to gather frogspawn to see it develop, and dabbling under stones and in water is essential to develop a child's curiosity - which leads to real expertise. It should not be stifled.