Giant Frog Farms of the 1930s | Hacker News Reader

Giant Frog Farms of the 1930s

atlasobscura.com

52 pointsmicrotherion18 comments

Oh, Louisiana. That is where I met a crazy swamp beast that scared the hell out of me. It turns out, it was a Nutria and similar to this frog deal. They were supposed to be a profitable critter to raise but they aren't. No, the one I met crawled out of a swamp, covered in slime, and ate a rotten fish - while staring me down.

It did not look even remotely tasty or like I might want to wear its fur. I can't imagine what people were thinking, kind of like these frogs. Frogs are handy for catching food, however. I am not sure if even gators eat the nutria. They are now an invasive pest species. They look worse when they are covered in swamp slime.

Actually nutria fur is very nice to touch and a good quality since it's water resistant (if we set aside the moral side of wearing furs). Also they're cute little critters (when you see them outside of the swamp, I guess), but yes, they're horribly invasive pest, and here in Europe create a lot of problems because they dig holes in river banks and dams.

Yeah, they look like nice friendly things you want to cuddle and pet - unless your first encounter with them is in a swamp while you're in a very inebriated state. (Meaning my state, not the State of Louisiana, though they are often pretty inebriated.)

I wish people would hunt bullfrogs up here in the Pacific Northwest - they are a terrible bane to our riparian ecosystems as they eat everything that lives in a wetland (except the larger mammals). And, as the article mentions, their appetites are almost insatiable.

Good timing on this article. After catching 6 bufo toads that were eating my bees, I considered the wisdom of breeding toads.........

Frogs are as unpleasant to eat as you might imagine (IMOP).

They don't taste like chicken.

The ones I've had do. Disappointingly so.

I think they do. Went frog gigging a few times as a kid.

I have eaten farmed bullfrog a bunch of times and it's definitely like chicken in a good way. The bones are thin, and there's not much meat, but 10 of them will fill you up.

I hope you ate only frog's legs? Eating a whole frog is probably not a nice experience :), but legs are IMHO quite tasty and indeed have a texture similar to the chicken breasts...

Next you're going to tell me that sea monkeys don't taste like lobster. Damn, so much for my next get-rich-quick scheme.

Funny enough they taste like they should - chicken but with a fishy flavor mixed in. It makes sense in a silly way since it's an amphibian.

Interesting that raising live feed for the frogs would be one of the major bottlenecks (despite good efficiency of 3 masses of food to produce one mass of frogs).

I don’t think 3 is that good for creatures that size. Commercially bred chicken are at 1.6, and for eggs it’s about 2 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feed_conversion_ratio#Poultry)

If one slaughters pigs young enough, one can get under 3, too.

Non sequitur opportunity to recommend one of my favorite movies of all time: Delicatessen.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101700/ If you've seen the movie, you'll get why I'm posting this.

Served with a side of mealworms, or crickets, if you prefer.

Interestingly, allrecipes lives up to the name on its tin: http://allrecipes.com/search/results/?ingIncl=frog&sort=re

What is the reference to mealworms and crickets?

Maybe it was just an idea ahead of its time. It sounds like people really did consider the frogs to be delicious, but raising them was a lot of trouble. Modern techniques out to be able to automate a lot of the labor.

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