On Feb 13, 10:26*pm, kay wrote:
lannerman;912786 Wrote:





Everywhere I go at the moment, I see dead frogs in ponds, very visible
as they always seem to lie upside down with thier white bellies very
visible. I thought, as frogs seem to be on everyones mind at this time
of year, I'd look into whats happening and this is what i've found.
The story seems to start with frogs being imported into the USA from
S, Africa in the 1930's where they were used in early pregnancy tests,
with them came the chytrid fungus (to which all amphibians are
succeptable) This fungus spread into the wild. It then seemlingly was
passed to Britain initially with the importing of bullfrog tadpoles,
popular in the 1980's and then in the 1990's with the increasing imports
of farmed goldfish. Its said that American fish farmers even used to
shoot bullfrogs (who predated on these farmed goldfish) blasting them
with shot guns, the fish then eating these bits of blasted frog, thus
transporting the disease where ever these fish ended up !
Once here, the disease (which has the potential to be as viralent as
mixamatosis was to rabbits) quickly spread. A further complication is
that frogs were becomming more succeptible to this fungus due to high
levels of copper in thier diet, from eating half dead slugs, toxicated
by the new type of blue slug pellet now becomming more commonly used by
gardeners.
So once again, as with alot of other diseases in various animals,
seemlingly ' innocent' imports have again caused devastation, will we
EVER learn ?????

I'm not sure that's necessarily the problem this year. We've lost some
frogs, not through disease, but because the pond froze to a depth of
about 18 inches, and they'd decided to tuck themselves into the shallow
end.
I suspect we're going to lose most of the ones who overwintered in the
pond, and will have to rely on the ones who overwintered elsewhere.

--
kay- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Yes, we had the same thing happen a few years back after a very cold
Winter.