TROUT
30 years of Scottish Aquaculture
Trout through the decades 14
TH Century Monastic Communities, and reputedly the French Monk Dom Pinchon, discovered the art of artificially fertilising trout eggs and then hatching them by burying them in the sand in wooden boxes. Up until the early 20th Century trout farming in the UK basically fol- lowed the same principles.
The earliest trout farms were established in the UK in the late 19th Century – for example Exe Valley Fisheries in the West Country in 1885 and Howietown in Stirlingshire – now part of the Institute of Aquaculture in 1881. Prior to the 20th century most trout eaten in Europe were caught direct from the wild and the few large-scale trout hatcheries such as those above were used to re-stock rivers for fishing. Until the end of the Second World War the UK’s trout industry consisted of less than 20 such re-stocking farms. In the early 1900’s a Danish trout farmer developed a pio- neering farm design where fresh water flowed through each fish pond radically improving fish yield and reducing disease. This breakthrough signified the beginning of the commercial trout-for-table farming industry.
Top to bottom: Trout fry troughs; Corgary trout farm; Scotrout Co-op
Husbandry practice even of the inter war years was very differ- ent to today. Hugh Maund of Exe Valley Fisheries recounts that production was tiny and feeding was either by planting weed in the ponds so as to produce natural food, or later mincing up offal and condemned meats to provide cheap protein. Food was 8/6 (or 42p) a ton picked up from the abattoir, but it was probably only 20 per cent solids and the pollution during feed- ing was awful. Also, preparation was extremely smelly particu- larly in summer! Fry were fed on finely minced liver. Growth was very slow, 12” Brown took 2-3 years, and most were sold at 6-8” in the spring. There was little or no disease control as antibiotics were still in the future…
A Danish entrepreneur opened the first ‘table trout’ farm in Lincolnshire in 1950 and in the following 60 years the UK industry has grown to its current size of almost 360 trout farms producing around 17,000 tonnes per annum. By 2010 nearly 5,000 tonnes of portion trout and 2,800 tonnes of large trout are farmed in Scotland each year.
Trout farming is very
different now than it was 30 years ago
46
Commercial trout farming really developed during the 1970s and it was at this point that most diversification took place – farm design evolving to include concrete raceways, recirculation technology and both freshwater and salt water cage farming. Technology, feed ingredients, farming expertise, treatments; all have moved on in leaps and bounds since then, and whilst not every critic of fish farming is ready to acknowledge the fact, trout farming is very much different in 2010 than it was 30 years ago. Representation of trout farming has changed over the years too. Although trout farmers first grouped together in the British Trout Farmers Restocking Association (established 1932) formal representation of table production did not really get going until the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) started to represent fish farming in the 1970’s. Although the NFU decided to disband their fish farming committee to focus solely on terrestrial farm- ing, the British Trout Association was established in 1983 to carry on the work or promoting trout farmers’ interests with Government and regulatory agencies.
Top to bottom: Brown trout; Howietoun trout farm; a Scottish ‘tourist’ trout farm in the 1980s
www.fishfarmer-magazine.com
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