Yabbies

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Parks said:
A lot of commercial farmers are going for the redclawhttps://www.prospectingaustralia.com/forum/img/member-images/6315/1450521425_imagesw35wpkq2.jpg

There was a Redclaw farm for sale in Queensland not long ago!
Stumbled across it when I was dreaming of a treechange!
I'll see if I can find the listing...
 
Not to cast a shadow on an otherwise brilliant thread but you'll need a fully fledged license for keeping and breeding yabbies over 200 (at least in victoria) a commercial one which is a. Expensive and b. Hard to get.
They are hardly little fellas but hard to breed, at least selectively. If a bloke was to dream I reckon you would need a temp controlled large area, good water supply and a lot of patience.
I've dabbled in yabbies enough to tell you the 10 - 15k you'll need to get set up (sure you can dig a dam if you want to instead) to be registered commercial operation operating legally would hold up most potential operations. Bait yabbies will always give you the best Roi, because it takes less time to grow and greater demand.
Every eating breeder I've ever met chucked it in after a while.
I would love to see someone do it successfully, I think finding a regular and hungry market is the biggest hurdle.
I was a part owner in a commercial bait supply company over 10 years ago. The next set of owners went broke but they had no idea. I sold nearly $700 out of my wagon australia day before midday off the books in the second year of operations, so theres money in it.

Maybe try small scale, my only advice is this, the closer you can mirror the habitat the quicker they will breed. It took a lot of experimental months to figure that out, and the more you seperate them into smaller lots the faster they grow.
 
Some yabbies can be chilled right down and survive cross border transport, you need to successively chill the water until they attempt to go dormant. Then when they arrive they just need to be brought back up slowly. If you can breed a yabby strain that can take that punishment with minimal losses you could potentially go global.
I've still got the polystyrene boxes we used to send them in. Same as the broccoli boxes from the supermarket. There's a tip for the bait fishermen.
 
Japan would have to be a good market, they'd take them anyway you got them there dead/live it dont matter they eat all that swims/swam :lol: , we use those polystyrene boxes with lid when prawning tie a rope around your waist and off you go, mmmmm prawns and yabbies and beer :cool:
 
Best way to transport yabby's is in a box inbetween wet towels and not submerged in water but with a few ice packs to keep the temp down. I used to have 20 plus bath tubs full of them(breeding) and would sell them to bait shops and to mates for a chew. They lasted up to a week with no water but had to be kept fairly chilled.
 
Chewy said:
Parks said:
I've seen these Murray river crays grow quite big. But I don't think the spikes are appealing to a market.
https://www.prospectingaustralia.com/forum/img/member-images/6315/1450513705_murray_river_cray.jpg
I think the stickly backs are protected. I remember i caught 1 when I was a teenager.

Freshwater crays have a bag limit and only a couple of months when they can be caught due the breeding season and size limits are imposed. I ocasionaly see the odd one in the buffalo river dam and waterways feeding it. Ken.
 
the yabbie farm equation

income hoped for = $50,000 p/a
yabbie market weight = 500 grams each
estimated market value = $10 kilo
number required to achieve target value = 5000 per annum
mortality rate per malt 50%
number of malts per growing cycle = 5
growth period for the red claw = 9 months
starting stock 5x 5000 = 25,000 p/a

you will need 2 separate yearly cycles to maintain annual supply
farm yabbies required = 50,000
cost $1 per yabbie at 25mm length= $ 50,000
50mm diameter pvc tube 100 mm long to be yabbie homes

thats a lot of yabbies to kick start a yabbie farm

the mortality rate may vary , so what kills them stress when they change their shells and they eat each other, they just die cold water, lack of oxygen they fight for territory, eels, birds .

licence yes one is required costs $$$$1000sssnnds

so my kids soon forgot about being yabbie farmers LOL
 
If I read it correctly and with that mortality rate the start off number to achieve an end target of 5000 would be a lot higher at 160,000.
160,000 - 80,000 - 40,000 - 20,000 - 10,000 - 5,000
 
well thats what too many late nights do, my calculus is wonky, lol, but your absolutely correct , its a lot of yabbies that one needs to start with from memory it was close to a million but the required income could have been a lot more and i think the value of a yabbie was around $14 I thought my post would spark some interest I got the info from the nsw dept of fisheries way back much easier to throw a trap into a dam and hope for a good feed
 

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