It's a lot of work during the short season, but can be a very lucrative business since everyone loves their mud bugs! The Southeast Texas Crawfish Farm makes more than $100,000 during the three months that make up crawfish season. Over 800 farms produced rice and 45 percent of Louisiana’s rice is grown on farms that range from 500 to 999 acres in size. Host Daniel Geneen visited the farm in Louisiana to see how over a million. Farmers will set traps with either fish or pellets, depending on the weather conditions, and you’ll need to invest into a crawfish boat in order to have the most time efficient and successful harvest. Unlike other livestock products, crawfish are caught using bait. Then the 30 pound sacks were ready for pickup. Now, rice fields are seeded with baby crawfish every other year, creating a new source of food and income for farmers. The most labor intensive part of crawfish farming comes from the harvest period. After a two hour soaking, we sorted and bagged them. Purging is completely submerging them in water for a long period of time to clean them. By comparison, in about 45 minutes out on the boat, we trapped about 60 pounds. Little mistakes could cost farmers money, while raccoons, otters, and birds do even more damage to the traps.Īlan Gaulding said he traps about 250 pounds of crawfish every day.
"Occasionally you'll pull up a snake in the trap." You get cuts on your hand from the bait," Alan Goulding said. South East Texas Crawfish Farm produces some of the best purged crawfish in Texas. While riding in the boat, you pull up the trap, dump the mudbugs into a bucket, put bait back in the trap, and put it back in the water. In the late 1940s, rice farmers developed a method to farm. There are rows of 400-500 traps in the marshes. Louisiana fishermen have been harvesting crawfish commercially since at least the late 1800s. Trapping crawfish is a lot of work, so I joined son Alan Goulding for his usual morning harvest on a small six foot boat. "We've got more orders than we anticipate having crawfish for," said John Gaulding of Southeast Texas Crawfish Farm. John Gaulding's family's flooded rice fields along I-10 East are a breeding ground for the crustaceans. Just 60 miles east of downtown Houston, Southeast Texas Crawfish Farm can't keep up with the demand. But have you ever wondered what it takes to get them from farm to table?
Chances are you've had a pound or two, or 10.
0 kommentar(er)
