Catfish production adds to farm's diversity

By LORI COPE | East Texas Edition

Hopkins County farmer Kelly Broyles (right) helps catch the net of harvested catfish from one of his two ponds. Broyles recorded each catch's weight before they were released into transprtation tanks. Broyles, who also raises breeder chickens and stocker cows, began catfish farming about a year ago in an effort to add income diversification to his farming operation. -Staff photo by Cope

May 16, 2002 -- Catfish farming is the newest ag venture for Kelly Broyles of Hopkins County. Already a fulltime farmer raising breeder chickens and stocker cows, Broyles felt catfish production would be good opportunity to diversify.

"I was looking for something else to do," Broyles, 32, said. "I had seen some catfish farms up near the Red River when we'd go up to Oklahoma to visit my father. One day I just stopped and talked to the guy (who owned the catfish farms)."

Last spring, Broyles had readied two 10-acre ponds for the first delivery of catfish fingerlings. They were trucked to his farm, located in northwest Hopkins County, from Mississippi. About 100,000 fingerlings were placed in each pond.

Broyles' farm has Crockett clay soil, which is good for holding water. The first pond he dug was filled with help from a nearby natural waterway. Once it filled, additional water flowed through pipe to fill the second pond. His goal is to have a total of five catfish ponds, and already water is flowing from the second one into a third pond.

The ponds are dug to a depth of 13- to 14-feet deep at one end. When it's time to harvest the catfish, seine nets are dropped in at the deep end, then gathered to the more shallow area.

It takes about a year for the fingerlings to reach harvest size.

On May 7, Broyles first catfish harvest began. Transportation tanks and equipment from Myrtle Springs, brought in by 18-wheelers, arrived at the farm as Broyles, wife Gayle and their children, plus several friends and family members anxiously watched.

The harvested fish were sold through a cooperative that supplies catfish to David Baird's Catfish king restaurant chain, who according to Broyles, who is in business to buy catfish farmed within a 100-mile radius.

"On average, there's 6,500 to 10,000 pounds (of harvest-size catfish) produced per pond-acre annually, and you harvest twice a year," he explained.

Half of the stocked fish (in Broyles' case, 50,000 per pond) are usually big enough for harvest within a year.

"Say if you take 50,000 fish out of a pond in the spring, you'd come again the fall and get those that weren't big enough to harvest in the spring," he detailed. After the first harvest, ever how many were taken out, that many fingerlings are bought and put back in the pond so the cycle continues.

Before harvest, Broyles took samples of the fish to David Baird's for a taste test. The first fish samples were taken six weeks prior to harvest, and as recently as three days before harvest.

"Actually the fish should have no taste," he said. Additives can be put in the water to create the perfect taste, or lack of fishy taste.

About 80 percent of the catfish harvested through the cooperative is used in David Baird's restaurants, Broyles said. The rest is sold to other food companies.

Broyles is accustomed to the work involved in farming, as he grew up on a farm and worked on a dairy for a couple of years. The catfish farming "is not hard," he said. The biggest challenge, he said, is keeping the oxygen levels in the ponds correct.

"The crucial time is about 3 a.m.," Broyles explained. "The sun produces oxygen (in the water). So after sundown, the levels start going down. That's why you see some catfish farmers out there at 11 o'clock at night turning on the (water) aerators."

Broyles has an automated system which checks the oxygen levels every 20 minutes. If the level is too low, one of the pond's two aerators is turned on. After another automated check, if oxygen levels are still dropping, the second one is started.

"If levels continue to drop, an alarm goes off. The alarm calls my cell phone so no matter where I'm at, I know if there's a problem," he explained.

At that point, Broyles would go to the pond and drop in a tractor-pulled, PTO-driven aerator that can move water at the capacity of four or five aerators.

Another important aspect to catfish farming is feeding. "It's critical to not overfeed the fish. You want to underfeed them rather than overfeed them," he said.

When the water is over 58 degrees, the fish have to be fed twice a day, every day.

"That's okay," Broyles shrugged. "I'm here anyway."