A bloody and tearful experience raising crayfish! Novices who want to engage in breeding, please be careful to avoid stepping on pitfalls.

Some netizens contributed, saying that they would like to share their experience of raising crayfish with everyone, and hope to exchange experiences with everyone. I also shared the detours I have taken, hoping that novices who want to engage in breeding will avoid pitfalls!

I am from Jingzhou, Hubei, born in the 1970s. They were among the earlier batch of people who went south to Guangzhou to work. Now that they are getting older and their children are older, they want to come back and raise crayfish to earn some living expenses. In 2014, I contracted a piece of land when I returned home, and worked with the trench digging army to dig ditches and raise crayfish. However, due to my lack of breeding experience, I lost more than 200,000 yuan. This time I will tell you about my experience, and newbies who want to enter the market can also learn from it.

I remember when I was young (the late 1980s and early 1990s), there were no crayfish at all in my hometown, but there were quite a few wild turtles. Sometimes when I go to the fields I encounter a crayfish and I don’t know what it is. Unexpectedly, after a few years, crayfish reproduced in large numbers, reaching the point where the shrimps were overrun, and it was difficult to find a wild turtle.

At that time, my son often went fishing for crayfish with his children, and one catch was a big bucket of crayfish. No one ate that stuff at that time, and the price was cheap, just one pound per piece. Sometimes even a few cents per pound. So no one cares about this kind of thing, let alone breeding it.

With the popularity of crayfish in the late-night snack economy, the demand for crayfish has increased, and with the excellent water quality in Jingzhou, the local area is also vigorously promoting the "shrimp-rice rotation" model to grow rice and raise lobsters. Both without delay have been strongly echoed by our farmer friends. So people started to engage in breeding one after another, and it was very lively.

In 2009, an outbreak of Harvest disease occurred in the crayfish industry, and many farmers lost their money. Fortunately, there were not too many farmers at that time, so the impact was relatively small.

What I didn’t expect was that from 2011 to 2013, the price of crayfish continued to rise. The good market and huge profits made shrimp farmers happy every morning when selling shrimps. It has also attracted more people to enter the breeding industry. Most of them, like me, have come back from other places to engage in breeding. They have not cultivated land for more than ten or twenty years, let alone have experience in crayfish farming.

Everyone thinks that raising shrimp is a simple job. In the past, crayfish could breed in large numbers in wild lakes and rivers, let alone now that there are dedicated people to take care of them. But I didn’t expect that it would be a big blow for me the first time. Because the shrimp stocking density was too high and I didn’t know how to prevent and treat disease in summer, I lost more than 200,000 yuan.

Here are some things that novices should pay attention to when cultivating crayfish:

1. The site selection must be appropriate. The crayfish pond should be located in a place with convenient water and drainage. Crayfish often need to change the water during their growth. Secondly, prevent pesticides and fertilizers from other places from flowing into the shrimp pond when it rains.

2. Disinfect the pond. The pond must be disinfected once a year to eliminate bacteria and fish from the rice fields. Take anti-escape measures, surround the pool with gauze and film, and check frequently. Weeds around the pool should be cleaned frequently to prevent crayfish from escaping.

3. Learn more new knowledge. Breeding is also a science. When you have time, play less cards and read it on your mobile phone or buy a few books. It is more practical than the experience passed down by word of mouth among farmer friends.

4. Release shrimp seedlings. Now after several years of breeding, the quality of local crayfish species has seriously declined. Do not buy shrimp seeds and shrimp seedlings locally. If there are good varieties, spend more money to buy them. If not, go to a place a little farther to introduce shrimp seedlings and shrimp seeds. This will make it easier to produce big shrimps next year! At the same time, remember to replant more, add more shrimp seeds in July and August, and replenish some shrimp seedlings in early spring of next year.

5. Feeding. Don't throw all the rotten things in it, as this will easily cause disease. Use feed to feed crayfish, and add more feed during the 40 days of the crayfish growth period.

6. Fishing timing. The price of crayfish is the highest at the end of March and early April, so you can choose to catch the big ones and leave the small ones at this time, and sell the crayfish for more than 5 yuan at a high price. You can make a profit early, but the big shrimps come out early because shrimp seeds were planted in July and August last year, shrimp seedlings were planted in early spring, and enough feed was invested.

I have said so much above, mainly to tell novices what they need to pay attention to, so that everyone can avoid detours and not explore blindly. Never think about making a fortune when doing things. When you have this idea of ??making a fortune, you are not far from failure.

We should still regard it as our own career, develop steadily, slowly accumulate experience and lessons, learn new knowledge, and introduce new technologies and new varieties. Although I failed in 2014, with these lessons, I can still sell prawns and make a small profit even in 2020, when the market is not good.

Let me also tell you the reasons for my failure in 2014!

1. Improper site selection and insecure water source. During the water shortage season, the pond water is shallow and there are many crayfish. When the weather is hot in summer, the crayfish will die from the heat.

2. Take it lightly and think that breeding is simple. The pond was not cleaned, resulting in a disaster of crucian carp in the pond the next year, and all the feed was eaten by crucian carp. The money earned by selling eels in the pond is more than that of crayfish, but the crayfish cannot compete with each other and grow very slowly.

3. Lack of breeding experience and poor management. In June, the weather was hot and the pond water was low, so the lobsters were not sold in time, causing a lot of losses. After adding dozens of cages in July, except for the first day when the number of lobsters weighed more than 100 kilograms, the number of lobsters continued to decrease in the following days, indicating that they were dead or had moved away a lot.

4. The initial investment is too large and cannot be controlled later. In the early stage, we invested too much in shrimp seedlings, so we hired two people to help. We also invested in loaches, eels, snails, aquatic plants, etc. Except for some money from selling eels, there is no other income. The labor costs for the other two are also a bit high, and the work they do is still not as caring as doing it themselves.

5. When encountering setbacks, your mentality explodes. After losing money that year, I just had the mentality of breaking the pot and not caring much about the pond. As a result, replanting was not done well, and the harvest the next year was still not very good. After losing money, I felt that if I invested again, I would lose more and more, so I felt like giving up.

In 2014, it cost 120,000 yuan to invest in shrimp ponds, 30,000 yuan for equipment, cages, etc., 50,000 yuan for feed, 15,000 labor costs, and more than 10,000 yuan for electricity and miscellaneous things. The total cost is about 220,000 yuan, but in 2014, I only bought 40,000 yuan of crayfish in one day. I woke up early and worked hard at night. I was bitten by snakes, insects, rats, and ants every day. It was much harder than working outside.

Experience needs to be bought with a lot of money. Without this experience, there will be no current annual profit situation. Sometimes, if you don’t experience failure, no matter how well others teach you, you still won’t be able to do well without experiencing it. Sometimes, don’t give up even if you lose money. Although that’s what they say, everyone should know that it’s easy to do things when you have money, but it’s difficult to do things when you don’t have money. Besides, if you have money, you won’t raise crayfish, right?

I hope all shrimp lovers will stick to it, learn more new knowledge about breeding, stop playing mahjong when you have time, and study more about breeding techniques. I believe crayfish will give you the best reward!