I don't know why I can't see those pics above...all I get is an image stating "OOPs, my image for this link is no longer here."
I think I've seen all those pics from George anyway so I won't worry about it.
I wanted to give a report of our HSB growout program from 2005...all the goods and bads.
We stocked out 8000 1.5" HSB in early July in a 3/4 acre pond with the goal of growing them to 6"-8" or larger for stocking in new and existing ponds. The reason for 6"-8"s and larger was to minimize possible predation in ponds with existing lmb, etc.
We fed the fish twice daily with a 40%+ protein diet from Burris/Cargill.
Had one incident of planktonic bluegreen algae that was finally controlled with the use of microbial formulations.
Tilapia were introduced, by accident, and ended up occupying much of the pond after one spawn.
We have estimated 60% survival rate for HSBs, which I hear is fair according to Mike Freeze at Keo Fish Farm in Arkansas. He figured that the main reason for reduced survival rate was due to the presence of natural forage (baby tilapia) which allowed a portion of the HSBs to grow out quickly and enable them to cannibalize smaller HSBs that were left behind.
So for those of you that bought HSBs from us this fall and winter, you know for a fact that you got the better of our batch...as the runts probably were eaten in our grow-out pond.
Fish sizes in late fall ranged from 5"-6" up to 11", but most of the fish were in the 6"-8" range.
George Glazener encouraged us to begin this program, based on his observations and obvious demand. As far as I know, we are the only fish farm in Texas producing their own advanced size HSB fingerlings. We want to thank George, the pond boss members, and the folks that bought our HSBs. We will continue this HSB growout program in 2006, with the same goal...just more fish.
