re: It's that time of year again - Why crawfish prices will be high...again

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how much do they sell in La?

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last prices i saw were averaging $14.99 lbs boiled and $11.99 for live

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I know this is a joke but I don't get the appeal of having a boil, outdoor activity, when it isn't at least 70 degrees outside...standing outside drinking cold beer in the 40's is kind of retarded

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I love frying fish outside when it's freezing cold, however...

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I am able to drain my crawfish ponds at the time I deem fit, but because there's no rain and we've never had a drought before, I never figured out a way to flood my ponds at the right time

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I would try to explain crawfish farming to you but you won’t listen and are probably too stupid to understand anyways

Hell I may not even boil crawfish this year as my personal set point is $3/lb before I’ll buy a sack

This is his chance to educate, but he won't come back and do it. They drain the ponds annually to plant rice or sorghum. Then the crawfish burrow.



So to sum it up, on a non-drought year:


1. Drain
2. Plant
3. ?????
4. Profit

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This is his chance to educate, but he won't come back and do it. They drain the ponds annually to plant rice or sorghum. Then the crawfish burrow.

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Um no

Most ponds are not crawfish/rice in the same year

So right now a farmer has a piece of land that is dry that he will plant rice on in March and he has a piece of land that is flooded where he will crawfish - this flooded field was planted in rice last March

The field he will plant rice on in March will get a permanent flood in April/May and then he will take crawfish from the pond he is currently fishing and seed the crawfish into that rice field

The rice field is then drained in July to harvest and crawfish bury - this is when the drought/heat was the worse. Crawfish also like to bury above where the water reaches on the levee - with no rain those crawfish probably died

So after harvest the field is flushed by either pumping or rain 2-3 times - it took weeks for some guys to get water across those fields this August/Sept
Then the field is flooded up in Oct - some crawfish emerge at this time but lots emerge on the first big rain event of the fall - didn't occur till end of Nov this year

Also anyone who uses surface water in Vermillion and Cameron parishes and some in Jeff Davis either had no water or the water they would use to pump was too salty to use - would kill forage and crawfish

There is an estimated 90k acres that won't have crawfish this year because of this

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2025 prices are going up too.

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you still haven't let us know in any of these crawfish threads why prices were down the last 2 years and that was with all time high inflation

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so its not as simple as just having city water pump itself in as needed, you need a natural water source like well water or a nearby canal to get your water

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Most crawfish ponds are located near copious amounts of fresh natural water.

I can see the problem with pumping in coastal areas due to saltwater coming in. I don't think that's the case for the vast majority of farmers