Anyone here own a crawfish farm?

I know guys who fish pond that essentially are hay fields. They bushhog them several times a year and then flood up for crawfish. Ours follow a rice harvest 90% of the time and the other 10% sometimes we even throw in “crawfish rice” purely for the crawfish crop.

Not meaning to hijack but whats dem flags mean in them big crawfish ponds. Passing thru mamou and they have big orange or yellow flags probably every 50yds apart

Did you review these specific crawfish publications on the LSU AgCenter website?

Louisiana Crawfish Production Manual

Cost and Returns Louisiana Crawfish Production, 2014

The economics publication is a bit out of date but still reasonably accurate. Apparently this the most current cost and returns budget the AgCenter has on crawfish farming.

The impact of birds eating stocked crawfish is over-rated if crawfish are stocked properly.

Adding hay to crawfish ponds after the ponds are flooded in the fall as a feed supplement is not effective - doesn't hurt but doesn't provide the intended benefits. To be effective the forage must be grown in the pond/field during the summer while crawfish are in burrows.

Probably 70% of 225,000 acres of crawfish farms in Louisiana use planted rice (some as stubble where the rice grain if harvested before the crawfish crop, other systems where rice is grown solely as forage for the crawfish and the grain is not harvested) as a crawfish forage but it is not necessary. The Louisiana Crawfish Production Manual has a chapter on Forages for crawfish and all the various options a potential producer can consider.

The Louisiana Crawfish Production Manual has entire chapter on stocking crawfish and things you need to consider to maximize survival and breeding efficacy of the stockers.

Of all the variable costs associated with farming crawfish, stocking is among the lowest cost, and it is usually only required once - more frequently if a pond failure occurs for any number of reasons. Planting forage, water pumping and management, baits/traps and harvesting labor are the "expensive" aspects of farming crawfish.