Raising crayfish brings big money: Liang Zhijian's guide to getting rich
In recent years, farmer Liang Zhijian of Banwei Village, Banfu Town, Zhongshan City, Guangdong Province, has set his sights on the market and taken an unconventional path to explore a new way of farming. He was the first to introduce 100,000 crayfish from Wuhan for trial breeding and succeeded, becoming the first in Zhongshan to explore a path to wealth by raising crayfish for big profits.
Liang Zhijian has been raising shrimp for 10 years and currently has 30 mu of shrimp ponds. After years of shrimp farming, he also ran into the awkward situation of declining returns as years of continuous high-density farming in the ponds and abnormal weather led to more and more shrimp diseases. How to escape the predicament and break out of the "encirclement" became a question Liang Zhijian pondered over and over. Last December, driven by Huang Xiaowen, head of the Nanyue Special Aquatic Research Center in Gangkou Town, he invested 100,000 yuan and introduced 100,000 crayfish from the Wuhan Yangtze River Basin Academy of Agriculture and Forestry Sciences, putting them into an 8-mu pond for trial breeding. After nearly 3 months of breeding, the crayfish grew from 100 per kg to 60 per kg, reaching marketable size; but Liang Zhijian was in no hurry to sell this batch of crayfish as commercial shrimp. Instead, he kept them as parent broodstock to lay eggs and hatch fry. According to reports, each broodstock crayfish Liang Zhijian introduced can lay 200 to 400 eggs, with a hatching rate of 80 to 95%. Hatching of the fry began in April this year, which can both meet his own need for breeding stock and supply other farmers; at present, fry measuring 1 to 1.5 cm sell for 350 to 400 yuan per 10,000. "This batch of Japanese broodstock is estimated to produce 1,000 fry by April. Selling just the fry alone can earn a sum of money," Liang Zhijian said excitedly.
No farmer in Zhongshan had ever tried breeding and hatching crayfish, and the results of trial breeding were even less known. To show off his trial-bred crayfish, Liang Zhijian went into the winter shed and used a "snake cage" to catch them. The crayfish were each about the size of a finger, dark red in body color, opening their large claws and waving them about. While handling the crayfish, Liang Zhijian introduced them to this writer, saying that crayfish have wide adaptability, can grow in all kinds of water bodies, and have low requirements for water quality; they tolerate both heat and cold, with an optimum growth temperature of 20 to 35°C. When the temperature falls below 5°C, they protect themselves by burrowing into the bottom or mud to hibernate naturally. When the temperature rises to 10°C, crayfish become active and start feeding. Crayfish are omnivorous, feeding on aquatic animals and plants such as water hyacinth and aquatic weeds. They grow easily and roughly, have few diseases, and simply spreading some lime to disinfect is enough. Management is much simpler than raising fish or shrimp. Raising crayfish requires no oxygen aeration, no pesticide application, and no need to buy large amounts of concentrated feed, saving labor and feed, with much lower costs, saving about 3,000 yuan per mu in feed expenses. Liang Zhijian also said two points need attention during breeding: first, build an overwintering shed in winter to keep them warm so the crayfish keep feeding, so they grow faster, yields are higher, and prices are higher when sold at Spring Festival; second, use nylon film with plastic netting or asbestos tiles to enclose the pond edges to prevent the crayfish from escaping. When talking about the "breeding know-how" of crayfish, Liang Zhijian spoke of it as if counting his family treasures.
As for the economic benefits, Liang Zhijian said: "Crayfish can be marketed after 3 months of breeding, and 3 batches can be raised a year, with a yield of 650 to 750 kg per unit. They sell for about 40 yuan per kg; after deducting a cost of about 20 yuan per kg, the annual net profit per mu of shrimp pond exceeds 40,000 yuan." He is also very optimistic about the market sales of crayfish: "Crayfish are delicious and nutritious, low in fat and high in protein. Market demand is large, and frozen processed exports show a trend of demand exceeding supply. In addition, in Wuhan, Shanghai, Xi'an, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Beijing, Chongqing and other places, crayfish have jumped to first place in the consumption of 'famous and specialty aquatic products,' and the market is in very high demand and selling well."
At present, crayfish farming in Guangdong has not yet taken off on a large scale. Developing artificial farming delivers immediate results and has broad "money" prospects, making it a good short, quick, and flat project for farmers to get rich. Optimistic about the market conditions and prospects, Liang Zhijian is now actively working with the Nanyue Special Aquatic Center in Gangkou Town to expand the farming area to 150 mu, drinking the "first sip of soup" and digging for gold and silver.
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The crayfish, whose Chinese scientific name is Procambarus clarkii, was once a grassroots aquatic product that few people cared about, but today its value keeps rising. Crayfish farming has now become a booming major industry in China and is one of the successful examples of the adjustment of China's fishery industry structure.
Crayfish originated in the United States, later spread to Japan, and during the 1930s and World War II, crayfish were introduced into our country from Japan. They began to multiply in Nanjing and its surrounding counties in Jiangsu Province. It is said that at the time the idea was to use their omnivorous feeding habits and strong vitality and reproductive capacity to clean up river channels, and later they grew wild and self-propagated in wild ditches and branches. This shrimp is a warm-temperate freshwater shrimp species with fast growth, strong disease resistance, tolerance of high temperatures and low oxygen. It will not die even after several hours out of water. It can live in freshwater lakes, rivers, ponds, ditches, rice fields and other water bodies. After a long period of expansion, it has bred wild in various waters of southeastern China, widely distributed in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, including more than 10 provinces (municipalities) and regions such as Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Hubei, Hunan, Anhui, Shanghai, and Shandong, gradually developing into a huge wild population and forming natural wild resources of a certain scale.