African bullfrog relocation in South Africa

[Douglas]

It is so exciting to find a post like this! Those are some great photos and it's great to hear you are trying to save some pyxies. You have to give us more info, Buck. Anything from pictures to updates on your work would be wonderful

[Buck Rogers]

Hi all, sorry I have been absent from the forum for such a long time but just had so much on my plate of late. I am pleased to say (although off the topic) I have a strong possibility to be the first person in South Africa to captive breed Bosc's (savanna) Monitors (Varanus exanthematicus). Okay in all honesty 2 people have done it before me but they haven't been able to hatch the eggs, but now that I know the process it should be easy going from here out to do this more than once.

It has been a very interesting season for us in Gauteng. We had very late summer rain falls and this obvioulsy had a toll on the Bullfrogs, we had one pop up in a garden and was injured by a dog, which the local rescue centre took care of and released and then we had a nother incident of froglets washing up in a public damn from a storm water drain but that's another story and wont get into it now. It has been very wet in January - Feb with some late season showers going into March, I have had a few call outs for Rinkhals (Hemachatus haemachatus) with the one regurgitating a toad in the bucket, but after the one call out I found a new spot for Bullfrogs so will be checking it out in September if we have the proper rainfalls

On my side we spent a lot of time trying to find wild BF, I specifically wanted to photograph and film the wild mating and paternal care displayed by the fathers but the local pan which has an apparant abundance of Bullfrogs had none this year. So I spent a good number of evenings doing some road crusing with NO luck. One evening I was out for a jog with my girlfriend and I noticed a lot of flying ants after an afternoon shower, this must have been at around 8 o'clock in the evening. So I got home and phoned my friend and said get the 4x4 ready we ganna go find some bullfrogs. We got to the spot and the pan was going wild but with no bullfrog calls, we drove around on a back dirt road close to the pan and we found this little guy just sitting in the road. The key factor was that there was 50mm of rain in one day which is the catalyst for this species, I hope some of this info can help you guys with breeding or correct keeping of the species. Please if you have any questions (except locality where this one was found) feel free to ask.

Sex: Unknown
Size: 9cm
Temps: 15 - 18 degrees Celcius
Time: 9:20pm
Rain: 50mm in one day.

[John]

Looks like a female to me, Darryn. Many thanks for posting this useful for information .

[Buck Rogers]

Looks like a female to me, Darryn. Many thanks for posting this useful for information .

How do you tell the sex of bullfrogs, is there something that you can just spot or is it from working with them enough that you can pick up?

[John]

How do you tell the sex of bullfrogs, is there something that you can just spot or is it from working with them enough that you can pick up?

Females are much smaller than males and the head shape is narrower in females and also smaller, proportionally.