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

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Why such secrecy? Leonard now believes he knows the answer. "Successful farmers just don't want to talk about the business. The fewer of us in it, the better. It's like the magician who won't explain any of his secrets. No matter how hard you try, you just can't do a magic trick unless someone else shows you how it's done. Oh, you might figure some of 'em out by yourself . . . if you spend twenty years tryin' . . . but it's not worth the trouble. Well, frog farming is the same way."

Slabaugh then went on to tell me that a female Rana catesbiana—wild or domesticated—will lay as many as 20,000 eggs along the edge of a pond. If left to shift for themselves, about 90% of those eggs will either sink to the bottom and die or will be eaten by predators before they hatch into tadpoles a few days later. And, out of the few lucky ones which make it that far, all but 6 to 10 of the vulnerable little tads will somehow fall prey to nature (and to each other, because they're cannibalistic) during the nearly two years which it takes for them to grow legs and become adult frogs. In other words, the odds against survival for the species are only a mere 20,000 to 10!

The magic secret of making Big Money in this business, then, boils down to a single golden commandment: Find some way to increase the egg-to-frog survival ratio in your ponds. Inexperienced farmers—the ones who start from scratch without consulting old hands like Leonard Slabaugh—find out, the hard way, that it can take several years to learn everything that Leonard told me in just a few hours.

Even if you have to dig out the "tricks of the trade" on your own the hard way, though, the effort can still be worth it. Because—once armed with those secret—seven a beginner can start producing 5,000 to 10,000 marketable bullfrogsfrom each pair of breeders on his or her farm during his or her first two years of efficient operation!

Now that can quickly add up to serious money, so you're quite obviously way ahead of the game if you can pick the brain of a sly ol successful frog raiser (like Leonard Slabaugh) before you plunge into the business . . . rather than after. I was lucky enough to do just that . . . and here's what I learned:

THE SECRETS EXPOSED!

Over the years, Slabaugh has found that a five-pond breeding, hatching, and maturing system (one BREEDER, one HOLDING, and three GROWING pools) works the best for his two-acre enterprise.

The first of these bodies of water is the BREEDER POND. This permanent "home" for Leonard's mature male and female stock (which range from 4 to 25 years in age!)-is 20' X 100' X 4' deep and contains approximately 100 of the amphibians (half male, half female).

Naturally, this is Slabaugh's "key" mini-lake, and he has taken steps to protect it. Several years ago, Leonard installed a tall corrugated aluminum fence all the way around the pond to keep out dogs, cats, raccoons, and other predators. Later he added wire fencing buried about 18 inches deep to discourage burrowing animals from digging their way in. (Eventually he installed this same kind of protection around all his ponds.)

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