Changes in morphological and physiological parameters of adult marsh frogs at different phases of their feeding and breeding technology

Abstract

The article discusses the possibility of keeping a marsh frog in a farm on the territory of central Russia to obtain delicious meat. For this, at different stages of keeping and after spawning, body weight and length, as well as hematological parameters, were studied. During the study, marsh frogs were kept in different conditions, depending on the season of the year, and fed on different foods. During the summer and early autumn, when kept in a summer enclosure in the air temperature range from 15 to 23 °C, when fed with natural food (live invertebrates) and fed with cultivated cockroaches and flour beetle, a positive increase and an increase in weight was observed. Hematological indices were slightly below the conditional norm, but the number of segmented neutrophils and eosinophils in frogs in the aviary turned out to be quite high, since the natural food they consumed could activate antiparasitic immunity. When the frogs were kept in an aquarium at an air temperature of 22 °C and fed only with cultivated food, the distribution of weight gain and plumb weight was approximately equal. After hibernation at 4 °C, the frogs lost a lot of weight and were placed in a special spawning pool. After hormonal stimulation of frogs with a mixture of drugs “chorionic gonadotropin” and “surfagon”, successful spawning was observed with 100% fertilization of eggs, while the plumb line was small and more uniform. A low number of red blood cells and a low hemoglobin were found in the blood. The total number of neutrophils in frogs kept in the pool decreased, and the number of monocytes increased by 3 times, exceeding the conditional norm by half, which may indicate a monocytic-macrophage reaction necessary for the resorption of remnants of reproductive products. There was also a rapid development of a conditioned reflex in frogs to feeding on a floating feeder, which is an important link in the mechanization of frog farms.