(hip hop music)
- Hey, good morning everybody and welcome to the vlog.
I am so excited today because we are heading off
to one of the coolest frog collections in the world
and a bunch of other cool lizards too, Josh's Frogs,
that's right, we are heading over there
and we are gonna have a great day.
Cannot wait to get over there, I have been pumped for
this trip for the last four or five days so what do you
say we just wrap things up here at the Reptarium
and get on the road.
'Bout half an hour away from Josh's Frogs,
I am totally pumped, I've got Robin here,
Jay in the back, I've got Jessica back there and we are
gonna see some absolutely amazing animals.
I am just excited to see what they have goin' on,
it's always expanding at Josh's Frogs,
where every time I come here it seems like they have
a whole new place so, it's gonna be pretty cool
to see what they're up to.
(hip hop music)
We made it to Owosso, Michigan to Josh's Frogs
and ironically enough I am in the day gecko room.
We're gonna see some day geckos, we're gonna see
some frogs, we're gonna see all kinds of cool stuff.
And again, like I mentioned, every time I come
it's completely different, like this room didn't even
exist the last time I was here.
And look at all of these geckos!
We have neon geckos, we have electric blues, we have giant
days with standing geckos, oh my god,
this place is so awesome.
We're gonna have great day today.
I am just super excited.
You guys remember Zack of course, he's been in the Vlog
before, I like to call him the face of Josh's frogs
because Josh doesn't like to be on film,
so--
- I have that honor.
- Yeah, exactly, so.
So what's been happening here man?
- A lot of stuff has been happening.
We actually just closed earlier this week on our building,
so we own the store, just 7,000 square foot building
from 1,800.
- Oh my gosh.
- And we filled it full of new employees, new products,
and new frogs.
- It's crazy dude. - Yeah.
- I was here, like seven, eight, months ago,
I think you have like twice the amount
of stuff that you did before.
- Yeah, we did. We had a very
successful year, several years of prep went
into there and I have an amazingly talented team
of animals and up to 20 employees now.
We're producing a lot of really cool species,
really consistently, a lot of them are not doing so great
in the wild, but we're able to produce 'em here in captivity
and help fuel that demand for the pet trade
without any impact on the population.
- It's just crazy, I mean, I saw the tadpole room,
I mean, do you have any idea how many tadpoles you have
right now?
- Just in dart frogs, you're talking about four
to 5,000, one clutch of white tree frogs alone
was over 3,000, so there is no exaggeration,
probably north of between 30 and 50,000 tadpoles
in that room right now.
- 30 and 50,000 tadpoles, that's insane.
And I love the systems, I love the way they're taken
care of, I am taking a lot out of this guys,
I'll be honest with you.
This is been the most inspirational trip that I've ever
had with Josh's Frogs, so let's go see what else
this place has to offer.
(hip hop music)
We're actually in the plant nursery section.
We're gonna pick up some bromeliads and some java moss
for the dart frogs and a few exhibits at the zoo,
but anyways, the thing that's so incredible is how
diverse it is.
How many categories they're in from plants to frogs
to lizards to all kinds of different stuff.
It's really inspiring and it's cool because Josh just
started as hobbyist just like anyone else,
and it's just exploded into this insane industry.
Every time I come, it's amazing how much they're grown.
Literally, we were just here six or seven months ago
and it seems like it's twice the size that it was last time.
But even something like the plants are just cool
to check out.
The one crazy thing about this place is it's like a maze.
I lost the group so I'm trying to find everyone,
and I have no idea.
There's three floors, maybe even four floors,
there's rooms everywhere, there's hallways.
I am literally lost in Josh's frogs.
As I'm trying to find my group, I came across this
bearded dragon and holy moly, this thing is absolutely
huge so I got distracted,
I figured I'd show you guys really quick.
I wonder what's up here.
It says the jungle.
It's the plant section.
Nope, he's not up here.
So, weirdly enough, I still can't find anybody,
but I'm trying my best, but this actually is a building
that used to be called the Owosso Casket Company,
so it was like the biggest funeral casket company
in the world and I think there's even rumor
that a handful of presidents had their caskets made here.
My point is now that I'm in a frog room all alone,
or no, this actually the gecko room.
This is the first gecko room, well so apparently
this place is super haunted,
so I am wandering out in the halls of this huge place,
used to be a casket place,
and I'm all alone and trying to find anybody,
because now I'm just
now I have no idea what's going on,
but having a good time.
Just like any larger collection of animals,
it's really important to have a great system in order
to care for the animals, to keep the food, the water
completely clean, and Josh's Frogs is definitely
masterfully working this system of taking care of animals.
(hip hop music)
I was also super excited to meet up with my friend
Chad Brown who came in to tour Josh's Frogs as well.
- All right, last time I hooked up with Brian
we were at Prehistoric Pets out in California
giant retics, about as big as a snake could get,
and now we're at Josh's Frogs, about as small as things
get in a hobby.
But this frog here, this Malaysian Leaf frog female,
is about as big as a frog can get.
Beautiful, beautiful frogs, females are super rare
in the hobby.
They've actually produced a couple of clutches
here at Josh's frogs, this is just part of the frog
madness that we'll see here at Josh's frogs,
from big frogs like this one, to tiny little dart frogs.
- I've been so excited to see these.
- (people chattering faintly)
- I know that it's kinda hard to see, but there's a tiny
gecko on my hand.
It is a electric blue day gecko.
Or lygodactylus williamsi.
Oh my god, it's so tiny, I can't even believe
this is a real thing.
So they don't stay that small,
they get about this big,
and they're like bright blue,
but I've been so excited to see one of these in person.
Oh my god.
- And guess what, I finally found Zack, and it's cool
because we are sitting in front of a door that I wanted
to talk to him about, of course, keep out quarantine.
Zack, one of the things I've really been trying to think
about is how we can do better with quarantining,
because oftentimes with us, we're just like quarantine
a rack on that side of the room,
- Yeah.
- we need a room like this,
so tell me what your process is here.
- So here at it's primarily ambient amphibians,
so we're not addressing things like snake mites
and stuff like that.
You know, we don't work with snakes here.
So we're worried about chytrid, a fungal infection,
ranavirus, a viral infection, main modes of transport
with those is contact so all new animals that come
into Josh's Frogs go into here.
Good example any of our future breeders,
or wild cots we bring in for new projects
to produce a lot of healthy captive bred animals,
come here, they hang out for three months.
They receive veterinary care, we also so PCR testing,
so we actually swab them, send it to a lab in Texas
and they check to see if any DNA is present,
that would indicate the presence of chytrid or ranavirus
so we can treat accordingly, those are huge diseases
that are really detrimental to amphibian populations
worldwide, and the last thing we wanna do is be
part of the problem.
This is a last stop for the employees
that work in the quarantine room,
they do all of their job all throughout the animal area
for their first part of the day, and then right before
they go home, they come in here, they do what needs
to be done, they wash up and then directly leave
the building, so there's no chance of cross contamination
to any of our other animals.
This is one of, the first one of many,
quarantine rooms, just to make sure what we're selling
out and also what we're bringing in and everything is
treated well, it's healthy, we can acclimate it,
and then get it breeding to produce more frogs for guys.
- That is awesome.
I tell you what, I'm definitely again, taking a lot
of inspiration from this visit to Josh's Frogs.
(hip hop music)
Meeting up with Jake here, you actually have been working
here for a little bit, right?
- Oh yeah, I worked here for three whole days,
so I'm kinda the man around here now.
- He's pretty-- - I'm in charge.
- Pretty seasoned here, right?
Actually he has a really cool YouTube channel,
I want to put a link in the description,
go show him some love, you'll probably see some stuff
here at Josh's Frogs on your channel, right?
- Yeah.
- So what's up with this, I mean there are a gazillion
tadpoles in here.
Do you ever work in here, or?
- Yeah, this mainly what I've been doing so far.
- Gosh, that's crazy, so tell me, is there some system
here or is it just.
- Yeah, so the oldest tadpoles are on this side
and then it goes oldest to youngest, and then they get
pulled if they're morphing and cleaned and fed.
- [Brian] Gosh.
- And these guys are all tree frog and toads.
- [Brian] Okay.
- And they can be kept communally, where the dart frogs
will eat each other.
- Exactly.
Well that's awesome.
Well again, I'm gonna be payin' attention to Jake here,
'cause you guys can see what's goin' on at Josh's Frogs
when I'm not here, and I love this place.
We're in the tadpole room, and Jessica, what do you think?
This is pretty crazy right?
The whole thing--
- It's insane in here.
Oh my god.
- So have you taken any kind of ideas?
I know we talked about the leopard geckos a little bit,
gonna give a little try on something like that,
but what else you takin' from this?
- Well, I mean, taking care of frogs is obviously
a lot different than it would be taking care of geckos,
so we don't have to deal with all this water stuff
which is nice, but when we were looking at their geckos
I have quite a few ideas to implement, that it might
keep things a little cleaner, just 'cause when we use
paper towel, it's pretty much instantly dirty,
'cause if an animal dumps the water or poops,
the cage just needs to be re-cleaned.
So it's a a lot of maintenance, we need to figure something
else out, the way they have their stuff
set up here is amazing.
It looks so clean.
And I really want to try to implement more of that.
- You guys know that I've been pretty vocal about wanting
to change my set up to a little more naturalistic
set up, well, I tell you the way they keep their leopard
geckos is kind of exactly what I'm thinking,
where you can still keep 'em in a rack system,
but lookit, they have some really great substrate,
they've got the natural cork bark, they've got obviously
some vermiculite, they've got their food dish here,
so this is kind of what I was thinking.
Again, I love coming to places like this because it gives
me lots of ideas and although we may do things
a little bit different this is at least the kind of
jumping off point of how I could eventually
keep leopard geckos.
Where I think I'd feel just a little bit better about it.
(hip hop music)
- Every reptile person knows about leopard geckos,
but I don't think everyone knows about these
Chinese cave geckos.
About the same size, nice docile temperament,
but a beautiful pattern and they've got these red
eyes that in my opinion, are the most beautiful
in all the gecko world.
Chinese cave geckos, same type of husbandry,
a little bit more humid, little bit different prey,
but again, a great small gecko, about as beautiful
as it gets, and the red eyes, undefeated.
- Well, there it is guys.
And what an awesome time, I mean, crazy cool here.
I hope that you guys enjoyed it.
Put all the links in the description,
to everyone's stuff, Josh's Frogs, everything like that,
show them some love, I tell you what,
let me know in the comments what your favorite
animals were, or what you think?
I mean, isn't this place cool?
As for now, you guys have an amazing day,
I love you guys so much,
be kind to someone, promise?
I'll see ya tomorrow.
(hip hop music)