Is Crawfish Farming Profitable? (All You Need to Know)

Crawfish is a popular aquatic food group farmed in many countries, including the USA, China, Greece, and the Caribbean. Crawfish farming is labor-intensive during the harvest season, but it’s relatively easy seafood to cultivate. However, one might wonder if crawfish farming is profitable?

Crawfish farming can be highly profitable, depending on the size of your pond and the number of crawfish you harvest. An average crawfish farmer in America sees a gross income of approximately $46,800 per year. By cultivating rice in addition, you can increase that income by $405 per acre per year.

As you can see, crawfish farming has the potential to be a profitable business. While it can undoubtedly be a full-time job, many crawfish farmers start their business as a part-time endeavor. This article discusses how to start a profitable crawfish farm and ensure you get the maximum income from your crawfish farming business.

5 Things to Consider for Profitable Crawfish Farm

It’s relatively simple to start a small crawfish farm, and many farmers start out doing crawfish farming part-time. Most crawfish farms in Louisiana are less than 150 acres, with an average yield of 700 to 1200 pounds of crawfish harvested annually.

Before starting to farm crawfish, you must know a few things. So let’s discuss every aspect of crawfish farming in detail.

1. Pond Conditions For Farming Crawfish

Crawfish aren’t fussy creatures, and they’re consequently considered low-maintenance seafood to farm. Under the right circumstances, you don’t need to put much effort into caring for them. However, there are some things you should consider when building your pond for the crawfish:

2. Sourcing Crawfish Seed For Crawfish Farming

If you live in Louisiana, you shouldn’t have any trouble sourcing crawfish for your farm. You can source crawfish from another crawfish farm or find them in the wild. If you don’t manage to find crawfish suppliers nearby, you can also order them from various aquaponics websites.

The number of crawfish you need to start with depends on the size of your crawfish pond. Experts recommend purchasing between fifty and sixty crawfish per acre of pond. So in June, you can source the crawfish and then place them in the pond.

Also Read: All You Need To Know About Lobster Farming (Is It Worth It?)

3. Feeding Habits Of Crawfish

You may have noticed that the list above doesn’t mention what to feed crawfish. Well, that’s because crawfish aren’t picky eaters at all. Instead, they live off a diet of mostly plant material and small amounts of protein in the wild.

When farming with crawfish, however, you can feed them various vegetables, such as soybeans, peas, carrots, rice, fruit, and hay. Kitchen waste is the perfect food to start feeding crawfish when you first start farming with them. Then, as your crawfish business grows, you can also begin to plant rice in the ponds.

Symbiotic Relationship Between Crawfish and Rice

Many crawfish farmers use their ponds for rice production and farming crawfish. There are several advantages of dual farming with crawfish and rice:

• The rice serves as food for the crawfish, meaning that you don’t have to purchase or source additional food supplies.
• Farming with rice and crawfish is a great way to increase your income revenue without needing more space.
• You can also increase your farm’s gross income by $407 per hectare by farming with rice.

Although growing rice in addition to farming with crawfish isn’t feasible in a backyard pond, it’s certainly something to consider as your farm grows and you require more space.

4. Harvesting Crawfish When Farming

Between November and June is when you will harvest your crawfish. The best way to harvest crawfish is by using crawfish traps and bait. These traps are inexpensive and readily available. You can add vegetables, fish scraps, or fish food to the traps and lure the crawfish out of their burrows.

If you’re short on time, leave the traps in the water overnight. Although this will allow some crawfish to escape, it saves time and labor. If your farm grows too big to drop the traps in from the side, you can use a boat to distribute the crawfish traps throughout the water.

To harvest the crawfish, simply remove them from the traps, and they're ready for the market. However, if you're new to crawfish farming, you might be concerned about where to sell your crawfish. So, let's look into this.

5. Distributing Crawfish From A Crawfish Farm

Large crawfish producers will mainly sell their crawfish at markets and deliver them to stores around the USA. However, suppose you're just starting your crawfish business. In that case, you can market them at your local restaurants or the local seafood market.

Despite the many crawfish producers, there is always a demand for crawfish producers. Therefore, taking the time to market your crawfish will lead to a successful business.

How Long Does The Crawfish Farm Take To Grow?

Thus far, we've explained how to start profitably farming crawfish. However, you might still wonder how long the business will take to become profitable. Well, to answer this, let's look at some facts.

A single crawfish female can hatch up to 900 babies at once. The babies take approximately 90 days to mature, and the female will have more than one brood in a season. Therefore, you can assume that your crawfish population will grow quite quickly

Apart from the initial startup cost of preparing the pond for your crawfish and purchasing crawfish seeds, there is a minimal running cost involved with farming crawfish, and you don't have to buy expensive food to feed them. These facts indicate that your crawfish farm should be profitable within two or three years once there is growth in the crawfish population and you have returned the startup cost.

The price you get for a pound of crawfish depends on the quality of your crawfish and their size. However, currently, the average cost for a pound of raw crawfish is $3.12, and the price for a pound of boiled or cooked crawfish is $4.46.

To determine your annual gross income from farming crawfish, multiply the number of acres farmed with the pounds of crawfish you have per acre. Then, multiply that number by the price you get per pound of crawfish. This will give you a reasonable estimate of how much money the crawfish farm will generate.

For example, if you start with a 50-acre pond and buy 50 crawfish per acre, you will do the following calculation:

50 x 50 x 3.12 (price per pound of crawfish) = $7,800. This means that your farm has the potential to generate $7800 within its first year. Of course, the more your crawfish farm grows, the more money you will make.

Conclusion

Crawfish farming is a profitable business in Louisiana and many regions globally. Crawfish aren't difficult to maintain, and a single female can produce about 900 hatchlings at once. However, to ensure your crawfish farm is profitable, you must build a good-quality crawfish pond and ensure the pond is flooded in September.

Overall, it is entirely possible to make a good profit from farming crawfish, and you can expand your farm as the demand for your crawfish grows.

Sources:

How to Start a Part-time Crawfish Farm

How to Raise Crawfish for Profit