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Fish Farming Suits Small Farmer
Fish farming suits Todd Daniels because it allows him to generate significant revenue off just 16 acres.
    "My business motto is based on being small scale. I want to be a small farmer and stay a small farmer," he explains.
    The Hayfield, Minn., man is licensed to sell live bass, perch, bluegills, hybrid sunfish, crappies, and walleye. He breeds all his own fish except for the walleye, which he purchases wholesale, grows into bigger fish, and then sells retail.
    Daniels' 16 acres consists of 14 ponds, with one species of fish in each pond. He switched to this type of management because he found that the yield from monoculture (one species per pond) is well over double of what it was when fish were mixed.
    "My niche is to be able to sell the customer everything they might want to fill their pond. I may only break even on the walleyes, but they allow me to meet all the needs of my customers. In some cases, it's the walleye that bring them to my store, and also end up buying other fish varieties," he says.
    Since fingerlings are the most profitable, he focuses on the small fish that range from 2 to 8 in. long and are 1/2 to 1 1/2 years old.
    "You can sell 100 small fish for every big fish you would have produced," he explains. "Eating-size bass are much more valuable as brood stock than as food fish. With food-sized fish, the risks are so high. Great fortunes have been lost because of it. We have a short growing season in Minnesota, and can't compete with commercial fishermen."
    Daniels' niche is retail sales. The majority of his customers are pond owners who want fish for their own personal fishing. He also sells to lake homeowner associations that want to keep their lake populations strong. Lastly, he also wholesales fish to other farmers who grow the fish bigger and then re-sell them.
    Daniels also offers consulting to help people establish their ponds correctly.
    To set up his own operation, he excavated 14 ponds. The advantage of that over using natural ponds is that they're built to your specs and arranged so you can intensively manage them.
    "You can always dig a hole, but whether it will hold water is important to find out before you dig," Daniels points out. "Water doesn't flow through clay, so that's the kind of base you want."
    He says the best time to excavate fish ponds is in the fall, when the water table is low. Once the ponds have been filled, he puts in straw or organic matter, which together with sunlight, brings on plankton production which provides food for the fish.
    The very first spring, the pond is ready to seed with fish. Daniels says that most people put in adults to generate the fry, which by fall have grown into 3 to 7-in. fingerlings that can be sold.
    Aquaculture is a very technical type of farming, according to Daniels. Everything has to be precise for it to work.
    "Even then, you're at the mercy of heat waves and bad winters. There are plenty of ways to accidentally kill fish during nesting, harvesting, sorting or delivery. There's always some new problem an endless parade of accidents and mistakes," he explains.
    "It is very time intensive, especially since I provide personal service," he explains.
    Still, Daniels is excited about fish farming, and says it can be successful if you start small, pay your way, learn more every year, and get a little bit bigger as you can handle it.
    "Or, you can take out a loan, borrow $50,000 to build and buy everything. You can start big and make your money that way, but the risk is much higher, as some people have found out," he says. "If you start small and grow, as I've done, you've got lower risk and less income. I've grown 20 to 30 percent each year for the past six years."
    To help save money, Daniels has found innovative ways to make equipment such as a fish holding tank he made by converting a 300-gal. milk bulk tank. He also uses 200-gal. plastic containers that once held jelly. He bought two of those for only $50, instead of paying $600 each for commercial holding tanks.
    Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Todd Daniels, 73323 270th Ave., Hayfield, Min


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2006 - Volume #30, Issue #2