Maryland Frog Farm-Sean Stewart

ELLICOTT CITY, Md. - There's an enormous frog farm in Howard County, Maryland. It's in a red barn just west of Ellicott City.

At any given time, there are about 500 exotic, adult frogs at the farm. They are sold to collectors, universities, and research agencies.

Emergency Room physician Sean Stewart owns the frog farm. He specializes in raising very colorful frogs which originate in Central and South America. They are known as poison dart frogs, because native peoples from that area would tip their arrows and spears with fluids from the frog. The treated spears and arrows would kill the intended target.

The frogs are colorful because that tells predators they taste bad.

In the wild, the poison comes from alkaloid plants which are eaten by local insects. The frogs eat the insects, and the magnified poison becomes part of the frog.

Dr. Stewart feeds his frogs flies and crickets, so his specimens are not poisonous. They sell for about $75 each, depending on the coloration.

Stewart calls his business Herpetologic. It also sells very colorful snakes, called green tree pythons. Some of them, which are bred for colors other than green, can fetch thousands of dollars from collectors.

Category:

Pets & Animals

Tags:

• Poison
• Dart
• Frogs
• Sean
• Stewart

[mintrev]

Wow good job news showing a bunch of idiots colorful frogs "dendrobatidie" now they want sme wit no research and end up killing them. So idiots out their listen this hobby requires months perhaps years of research.

[sind55]

@microiguana i don't know srry... :(

[microiguana]

@sind55 LOL what do you think? Do you know of any woods in maryland that would have these kind of tropical, poisonous, humid-loving cold-sensitive dart frogs?

[Vivlover1]

Been to his frog farm. Its soooo awesome!!!!!!!! Got a trio of epipedobates anthonyi

[sind55]

did he buy all frogs or did he catch them in the woods?

[TheDutchGamers]

i tought turtles are boring, now i got some myself.. and i tought frogs are disguisting, but they are not, and now i want some to :D

[AlbertoMuse]

wats his site

[EclipseExotics]

Perfectly safe to cut the eggs, if they're close enough to hatch date. The hatchlings will emerge normally--it doesn't affect them at all. I cut some of my ball python eggs...anything past day 50 is fine. If they start to dry, I just add a little clean water to the inside of the egg. There is no need to tear them...because it doesn't matter. As long as you don't stab the hatchling with the scissors, or cut the umbilicus (both of which would be rather difficult to do), they'll be fine.

[AQUAVIVARIA]

So Dont Cut The EGG ! Make A cut an Then Rip The Leather Of The Egg ! pull the skin of the egg upwards !

[ModernDayManiac]

@ray1taylor why, get a degree in herptolagy and get your own collection going.