THERE'S A BIG MONEY IN THE SECRET ART OF FROG FARMING!

Enlarge Image Image Gallery Older tadpoles go from incubator to holding pond... During their 4 to 5 monthsin the holding pool, the tads change to frogs. The male bullfrog (foreground) has larger eardrun ""circle"" that his mate... A fish net comes in handy for filling big orders

Most business-minded farmers can figure on making about $69 gross income on an acre of wheat . . . approximately $160 from the same amount of corn.. . and around $175 with an acre of soybeans. Then there's Leonard Slabaugh,a Missouri farmer with a completely different approach. For Leonard swears that his highly unusual crop—LIVE BULLFROGS—returns a full $10,000 profit . . . per acre . . . and requires only one hour of his time each day!

"Why, I can harvest 6,000 frogs a year on this two-acre farm . . . and I realize anywhere from $2.50 a pound to $25 per frog!" Leonard Slabaugh—against a background of grunts and croaks—was telling me his success story with as much enthusiasm as a gold prospector who's suddenly struck it rich. "Yep, you can make big money with these little rascals. Come on out to the breeder pond and I'll tell you all about it."

PLOP, PLOP, PLOP

As we walked up to the mini-lake, I saw hundreds of startled giant bullfrogs jump into the water. Then, half a minute later, pairs of marble-sized eyes began peeping above the surface of the pond like submarine periscopes searching for the enemy.

True bullfrogs (Rana catesbiana)—the webfooted livestock that Slabaugh specializes in—are not difficult to identify since they're the largest frog native to the continental United States. Although their natural habitat centers around the woodland lakes and ponds of the eastern and southern U.S., these profitable amphibians have been known to thrive in cultivated waters as far west as the Pacific coast and as far north as southern Canada.

MARKETS

"The demand is greater than the supply . . . it always has been," Leonard Slabaugh continued. "I sell all that I can produce and still have people backed up on waiting lists: Supermarket chains and wholesale outlets buy 'em in enormous quantities. Big restaurants want 'em shipped out on ice. People come by here and pick'em up by the buckets full. High schools and colleges need bullfrogs for their biology classes, and laboratories use 'em for medical experiments. Why, the market is growing continuously all the time."

As I soon learned from Mr. Slabaugh, there are even scientists at NASA (the space agency) who want to launch some of his frogs into orbit! They'll pay him $25 each-for 30 of his best stock a month—until the contract ends in 1982. That's $750 in addition to the estimated $1,500 to $2,000 of monthly income that Leonard now makes raising his giant croakers!

SECRET INDUSTRY

If frog farming is so profitable, then, why aren't more people doing it? "This is a secretive business," Mr. Slabaugh admits. "I tried to raise frogs when I was 18 years old, but—back then—I didn't know how to keep enough of each hatch alive all the way up to salable size to make it worthwhile. Oh, I talked with other farmers all right, but they made frog breeding sound like the worst occupation in the world and wouldn't give me any help. I even looked for printed material about the subject, but there simply wasn't any available."