Frogs

[Marjoriew]

Where can I get some tadpoles to grow into frogs.
I've heard you can't take tadpoles from the wild.
How can I get hold of one. Grandson wants to do a lapbook on Frogs.
I've heard of Grow-A-Frog kits?
Are they available in the UK?

Aren't we a bit late for frogs? Not that I know anything about it, but all the tadpoles in my friends' pond got squashed by enthusiastic children turned into frogs and hopped away a few weeks ago

You need, I'm afraid, to wait until next spring, I think, and find some frogspawn, rather than tadpoles. You keep them in a tank outside, and then once they've hatched, you need to return them to whence they came within a few days.

I can't think of an ethical way that you could grow frogs from tadpoles. It's the wrong time of year now anyway. But could you spend the rest of the summer building a wildlife pond in your garden? I'm not sure how you'd do it, if it's ethical to transplant frogspawn to another pond or not...or if there are tried and tested ways to attract frogs to your own pond?

I think that would be a fantastic way to see the process though. How exciting! Right...I'm going to dig a pond in our garden...

Yay, me too. I bet my Housing Association will love itNext spring it is, then.

I just re-read my message and am guffawing that I wrote 'from whence they came' in all seriousness .

I really am not that pretentious in real life!

Aw, I wanted you to be that pretentious in real life. My husband has been known to use that phrase in all seriousness. Mostly to wind up people who don't know what on earth he means

It is too late in the year now, as the others have said. You'd have to wait for next spring, and then you can gather some frog spawn. Make sure it is frog spawn though, not toad spawn!!

When we were kids we often had frogs. Before we had a pond, we collected frog spawn, some pond weed, rocks and some pond water and put it in a large old fish tank in the kitchen. Once the tadpoles had emerged, we tied pieces of chicken and bacon onto string, and hung them over the tank so that the meat was in the water. It was great fun watching the tadpoles devour it!! Once the froglets had their second set of legs, we took them back to the pond we had collected the spawn from, and released them.

And then when we had a pond, we just collected the frog spawn and some toad spawn too, and let nature take it's course...and as frogs and toads usually return to the same pond every year, we only collected spawn once.