Crawfish Farms

How to grow a crawfish:

1. Grow a rice crop in water from March to July (this forms a canopy over the water to keep it cool)
2. Seed crawfish in the rice field in June (seed crawfish come from the Atchafalalya Basin; the larges river basin in North America, stretching from Simmesport, LA to the Gulf of Mexico) **as temperatures rise the crawfish take over and burrow underground.
3. Drain water and harvest the rice in late July/August with a combine. The crawfish are safe underground in their burrow. Rainfall at this time is critical to the burrow survival rate. **crawfish are activated to reproduce from barometric pressure changes during periods of rain so droughts can severely impact crawfish production.
4. When temperatures cool, Re-flood the old rice field and it becomes a crawfish pond in September/October **after flooding the female crawfish come out of their burrows with baby crawfish attached to her tail. Each female will hatch 400-900 babies and may reproduce multiple times in a season. It takes 90 days for the crawfish to reach market size.
5. Harvest the crawfish. If it is warm this can begin in November if colder it begins in February and continues thru June. ** Crawfish are trapped with bait; therefore, harvest is dictated by the catch. They are harvested in a specially designed crawfish boat, the process is very labor intensive.
6. When crawfish start to burrow again, Drain, plow and level the field to repeat the process.