Juvenile yabbies are bred and reared in their own hatchery from stock reared in the ABYA system. The partners are on their second generation of selection and John says they’re getting better results each time they introduce a new generation.
They can also breed to a colour which could be important to particular industries and markets.
John says you can trace the life history of every single yabby on the farm. “Its birthday, its growth rate, whatever you need to know about a particular yabby can be traced.
It makes no difference whether you have 500 cells or five million cells. But throw them in a dam you’ve got no idea of what’s happening.”
Growth rates:
Growth is measured in two stages. The first is the juvenile stage. The 20mg hatchlings reach 1Og to 15g in four to six weeks. Alan says the better growers are putting on 40g in 14 weeks. giving a wide range of market options for the product.
However, this data has come from a period of experimentation with the management of their growth confined to one tank.
When the amount of experimental system is expanded, the chance to produce in size cohorts will be explored. Rather than have juvenile yabbies in with older stock that have a different dietary requirement, the dietary needs of each size of yabby can be explored.
Alan says: “This is what we’re achieving at the moment. With the expanded system we’ll be able to target our management more toward production than research and development.”
Animal Welfare:
The animals in the system are in robust good health with clean shells and no sign of tail blisters. Unsightly Temnocephala eggs that can be found on some pond reared yabbies are nowhere to be seen. These yabbies are in mint condition — Alan says that over the six-month period of his trials the mortality rate was 10%.
During that period the yabbies were handled quite a lot; under commercial conditions they’ll be left a lot more to themselves. Moulting — even without the risk of predation — is a high stress period; Alan feels that a mortality rate of approximately 1% per batch should be expected.
The selection pro gram is expected to further domesticate the yabbies and remove this natural stress level over successive generations.
Marketing:
One of the attractions of yabby farming is that they have a market value from hatchlings just off the tail right through to 75g table yabbies. The market therefore is very broad and all sectors of the market could be served by this system all year round.
John says: “The market for yabbies is so big that it scares everybody who looks at it seriously. if you could produce 25 tonnes a week, somebody would buy them.
No one in Australia can do that at this stage. We have had hundreds of enquires from Australia and overseas in regard to the purchase of systems and product.”
The future:
“The only constraint we have is money,” Alan continues. “We could sell our system to operate under license all over the world. We could sell our systems locally under a product buy back arrangement.
With seafood markets firming around the globe, we’ve had a lot of interest from overseas, the time to get into aquaculture is now”
Yabby farming has a history of false starts. With their innovative approach and willingness to experiment, John and Alan are confident that they are on track to make the industry a legitimate and viable aquaculture sector.
Author:
John Mosig
