Kitchen Garden Forum

We lost hundreds of frogs to Red Leg Disease a few years ago. I am extra happy to find 2 alive and healthy in the garden tonight

What is red leg disease, it sounds grim! I'm worried about my froggie friends now! What are the signs?

Hi Deb. The frogs legs went red then the red spread to the whole body. It spread slowly to all of our frogs. When they were red all over they started to swell up with water then died. Very upsetting as we love our frogs. I have some photos of them. I would put a photo on here but they are printed and not on my digital camera. It was a few years ago (maybe 3 or 4) so hopefully our new frogs will be O.K.

Ugh, that sounds horrible, I shall keep a close eye on my liitle froggie mates for signs of that. Although if I did see any signs of it, I don't think my local vet would be too impressed turning up with a crate load of frogs, (if indeed I could catch them...)!!!

:( So sad to find 3 dead frogs today. Not red leg and all look normal just dead. We have a healthy pond - filtered and lots of oxygen from a waterfall as it has lots of fish in it. The frogs can get out easily so can't understand why they died. We don't use slug pellets and still have plenty of slugs for them. Any idea what could have killed them ?

Hi Happymouse
There is a terrible frog disease which is world-wide called chytridiomicosis(?) and is killing frogs in many countries. A great deal of international research is being done on it and last time I checked they were thinking it was air-borne.
The law here now is that no frogs, tadpoles, spawn can be re-located. Which made it difficult when I was doing wildlife rescue as lots of green tree frogs come into the fruit & vegie markets tucked away in shipments of bananas and lettuces etc.
We couldn't ship them back north as we used to, so bands of volunteers had to collect them from the markets and take them into care. They could never be released. I had a number of them living in my bathroom for a while. I hope that is not what is killing your frogs, as there is nothing you can do about it. Hopefully some that survive may build up an immunity to it.