Although they are still no where near as popular as dogs or cats, keeping frogs as pets is on the rise in both North America and Europe with more and more people adding a pet frog to their family.
As you can probably guess, this has resulted in a number of different questions about keeping pet frogs to ensure that you are offering the absolute best health care possible to offer your frog a good life.
Although we do see a wide range of different questions about looking after pet frogs, we have noticed more and more people reaching out worried that they have an obese frog recently so we have decided to make this the main focus of today’s article.
Overfeeding frogs can be very easy when you are new to keeping frogs with overfeeding being the most common cause of a frog being obese.
That said though, there are a few other causes that can make a frog obese but most of them are easy to avoid when you know about them.
This makes caring for your pet frog and keeping its body weight in check much easier as well as improves the general health of your frog to try and ensure that it will live for as long as possible without developing any serious health issues later in life.
How To Help An Obese Frog!
The easiest way to help an obese frog is to have it eat less and move more. Although this may sound simple, it is common for beginners to keeping frogs to still overfeed their frogs even when trying to control their calorie intake.
This is due to so many frog food products not giving accurate guidelines on the servicing size for frogs resulting in frogs putting on weight quickly.
We would always recommend that you try to offer your pet frog a suitable No products found. that has been designed from the very start to offer your frog the best possible nutrition.
On top of that, most types of frog are also able to have freeze dried mealworms as a treat now and then to help keep their diet interesting.
Always follow the serving size recommendations on the frog food though and remember to slightly drop the food you offer them on days when they also get mealworms to help keep their calories correct.
Getting your frog to move more to actually burn the stored fat off can be harder than some people initially think depending on the type of pet frog that you keep.
Some types of frogs will enjoy swimming in the bath or in a large bowl but others won’t.
Also, take precautions to ensure that your pet frog has somewhere to rest in the water too as an obese frog is often heavier than it should be as well as out of shape so it will need rests when swimming.
Can Frogs Be Obese?
Frogs can be obese but some frog species are just larger than others and look obese even if they are a healthy body weight.
You can often Google for pictures of the specific type of frog that you have to see what it should look like with most of the popular frog species kept as pets also having body weight charts available online too.
This makes it very simple for you to check how much your pet frog should weight at any given time allowing you to better judge if it is obese or not.
Please keep in mind that it is common for male and female frogs of the same species and age to weight completely different amounts to each other.
If you don’t know if your pet frog is a male or female then just try to gauge your pet frogs weight by the weight brackets that it falls in between on the body weight charts for that type of frog.
With many people keeping multiple frogs these days, you may be able to compare the weight of your frogs to the weight of another of the same species but it can be common for beginners to accidentally overfeed all of their frogs making this problematic.
How Do You Know If Your Frog Is Obese?
An experienced frog keeper will often be able to gauge if a frog is overweight or not just by looking at it. If you know any experienced frog keepers in your local area they may be able to help you work out if your frog is obese or not.
There are various weight charts available online for most frog species though letting your quickly and easily check what weight your frog should be.
An overweight frog can sometimes still be without expected weight brackets depending on the time of year too so you will also have to take that into account too.
The hydration levels of your frog’s skin can also have an effect on the way it will look making it look larger than it actually is at times making it look obese but when you check its weight it should be inline with what you would expect.
Different frogs do require different levels of skin hydration and different humidity levels too so you will have to double check that you are offering your pet frog the optional humidity for their habitat to help prevent this.
Thankfully, the more common frog species that are kept as pets do tend to be much easier to hydrate correctly thankfully making it much easier for beginners.
Why Is My Frog Fat?
The two most common reasons that your pet frog maybe fat or obese is overfeeding and a lack of exercise.
Thankfully, both are usually easy to fix for most people and you can often focus on just feeding your pet frog correctly and they will often lose weight without having to exercise.
What you feed your pet frog is also important though and for the bulk of their diet, you should be trying to use a No products found. with something like freeze dried mealworms as a treat when required.
This tends to be suitable for most people and the small food sizes make portion control much easier than some of the other types of popular frog food on the market.
There are some relatively rare health issues that can sometimes make pet frogs gain weight but these can be hard to correctly diagnose and to treat.
This is why we would always recommend that you book a short video call with a professional veterinarian as the are usually cheaper than an actual visit to your local vet for specific advice on your frog if you think that it is gaining weight due to a health issue rather than overfeeding.
How Do Frogs Lose Weight?
The easiest way to help an obese or overweight frog to lose weight is to restrict its calorie intake by around ten percent of what it requires for each day for a prolonged period of time.
Only offering your pet frog around 90% of its food requirements can help it loose weight quickly without it having any problems due to a lack of calories.
You are also able to try to encourage your frog to excrsise more and although this will work well for some frogs, it may be a waste of your time with others.
You will know your frog better than anyone else and be able to tell if it will be happy swimming or walking around more often than it currently is or not.
Giving your pet frog plenty of chances to excerises along with controlling its calorie intake really is a great way to help your pet frog lose weight quickly though.
It will also help to reduce the chances of other potential health issues occurring in your frog too so it can be worth trying. Once your frog is down to its goal weight, you simply top its daily calories back up to what you would normally feed it.
Conclusion
That brings our article going over how you are able to help your obese frog to an end. Helping an obese frog to lose weight is usually much easier than most people think and well worth doing. It offers your frog a number of health benefits and will often require minimal effort on your part too. Please note that there are some very calorie dense frog food products on the market that are not suitable for all types of frog so always double check the specific type of food that you are offering your frog too.
