| Current
activities: |
Conduct workshops
and on farm visits to decrease fish production costs and increase farm safety.
I work directly with catfish
farmers to make the production of farm-raised catfish as economical and as safe as
possible. Farmers may chose to attend any of the 4-5 workshops/seminars conducted
annually and/or also keep informed through the NWAC newsletter. Workshop topics include
water quality monitoring, record keeping, hatchery management, off-flavor, crayfish &
freshwater shrimp production and farm safety. An annual seminar on current research
outcomes is held to give fish farmers a chance to learn about recent advancements.
Producers may request on site visits to help identify strengths and weaknesses in their
individual operations. New practices adopted by individual producers may be brought
to the attention of researchers if more experimentation is needed to confirm new
approaches or the practice maybe extended directly to other producers when
appropriate. Producers are also updated as to changing practices which maybe
ineffective and costly to their operations. In conjunction with Dr. Terry Hanson I have
developed and presented a "modular system" stocking strategy for production of
food-size catfish. On larger operations this type of system was shown to cut
production costs 2-3 cents per pound. In this capacity I work with Dr. Jimmy Avery,
Extension Aquaculture Leader at Stoneville, and Mr. Charlie Hogue, Aquaculture Extension
Associate at Brooksville, and the many USDA and MAFES researchers at the NWAC. |
