In the 1990s, investors poured money into emu and ostrich farming after marketers promised demand would go up for the lean meat of the big birds. The market never developed and most emu farmers were stuck with expensive, hungry birds they could not sell. Bullfrogs are difficult to raise. Holyoak estimates only 1 percent survive to adulthood in the wild because of an array of predators. They also eat each other, so they must be separated in captivity.
Bullfrogs are fussy eaters, preferring live insects that wiggle in their mouths before they swallow.
But Holyoak said he has trained his frogs to eat feed pellets. He said he has designed a feeding machine that mimics the movements of insects, but he's keeping it under wraps until he gets a patent. Some foreign farms use machines that vibrate the pellets so the frog thinks it is alive. Inside his frog building are rows of metal racks. The frogs live and grow in the trays.