How do you grow fish in the winter on a farm?

That’s a question we get a lot, and the answer is… we just dress warm and keep feeding them!

Fish grow in colder water, just slower! And our team works in colder weather, also just slower (because we’re wearing so many layers we can’t put our arms down like in the movie “A Christmas Story”)!

Fish are ectotherms which means they’re fine in the cold. Their metabolism just slows right down, so they eat less and grow slowly.

When it comes to water, it just keeps on flowing! Our 5 farms are all different beasts with their own unique water sources. Three of them have free flowing spring water that normally maintains its temperature between 6-10°C, one farm uses pumped well water that is 8°C all the time and then there’s our home farm Cedar Crest that uses a combination of springs and creek water.

The water will freeze over in our outside tanks, and we use aeration to keep a portion of the tanks open this time of year so we can provide a place for the fish to eat, monitor them and allow them to inflate their swim bladders.

Inside, we use the winter to hatch and grow a lot of our babies. As soon as all the ice melts and water temperatures rise, outside they’ll go!

Hope you all are keeping warm in this cold snap!