One cold, windy and sunny day, Joe got up and wanted to grow some frogs.
“Mom, can we collect some tadpoles from the pond and grow our own frogs?”
High off the success of hatching our own eggs, we put are mud boots on, grabbed a glass jar and trekked out to the pond to collect a few tadpoles.
“We might not see many since it’s so cold,” I told Joe.
We saw just a few more than I thought we would.
“Our pond is going to have all these frogs!?”
“Well, not all of them will make it,” I said.
“Oh yeah,” Joe said. “Predators.”
Joe wanted to collect a jar-full, but I convinced him that we should start with 5.
He dipped the jar into the shallow end and carefully lifted it out.
We ended up with 10.
The boys wanted to rush back inside and put them in the fish tank. I wasn’t so sure that Bubbles and Fannytail would appreciate that, so we went in and researched how to care for tadpoles.
We picked a shallow container and covered the bottom with gravel. Jake picked out a few bigger rocks for when the tadpoles grow into froglets.
Then we filled it about halfway up with some of our filtered water and poured the 10 tadpoles into their new home.
A couple of the sites we looked at said that they would eat fish food. Since we already had it on hand, that is what we sprinkled in for now. It’s not an ideal diet for frogs, so I ordered some frog food.
It takes 12-16 weeks for the tadpoles to develop into frogs. We are not sure how old these little guys are so we may see frogs sooner…or later.
Tadpoles in a jar
Metamorphose into frogs
In a month or 4
a pinch of homestead 