Cajun Crawfish

By Patrick  Bonin

Branch, LA. – The temperature is rising, the humidity is increasing and the school year is almost done… That means Memorial Day is fast approaching, and summer is right around the corner here in south Louisiana!

Memorial Day will be celebrated this year on Monday, May 28^th, and is traditionally seen as the official start of the summer vacation season. The days leading up to that weekend are also a busy time here at Frugé Aquafarms in Branch, La., as crawfish are in high demand when families and friends gather to kick off the summer holidays.

“Crawfish play a big part in people’s holiday plans,” said Mike Frugé, co-owner of Frugé Aquafarms. “Getting the opportunity to sit down and visit at a crawfish boil on Good Friday or Memorial Day is a tradition for many families in south Louisiana.”

Here’s some “Memorial Day Trivia” that you can use to dazzle and amaze your friends while you wait for the crawfish to finish boiling in a few weeks!

• Memorial Day is a day of remembering all of the men and women who died while serving in the United States Armed Forces.
• It was formerly known as “Decoration Day,” and originated after the Civil War to commemorate fallen Union soldiers. “Memorial Day” was eventually declared the holiday’s official name by Federal law, but not until 1967!
• The first known observance of a Memorial Day-type ceremony was held in Charleston, South Carolina on May 1, 1865 in honor of Union soldiers who died there as prisoners of war.
• Memorial Day is a federal holiday observed annually in the U.S. on the last Monday of May. It kicks off summer, while Labor Day marks its end.
• The Indianapolis 500 has been held on the Sunday of Memorial Day Weekend since 1911. The Coca-Cola 600 Sprint Cup Series race has been held later that same day since 1961, and in golf, the Memorial Tournament has been held Memorial Day weekend since 1976.
• The holiday was originally celebrated on May 30^th, but Congress passed the Uniform Holidays Bill in 1968, which moved four holidays (including Memorial Day) to a specified Monday to create three-day weekends. That change officially moved the holiday to the last Monday in May each year.
• The National Memorial Day Concert, which is broadcast on PBS and NPR, takes place on the west lawn of the United States Capitol.

Whatever your plans this Memorial Day, everyone here at cajuncrawfish.com hopes you have a safe, fun day relaxing with your family and friends. And in the joy and excitement of summer finally getting here, please take time to remember all of the men and women who have given their lives so that we can be free!

By Patrick D. Bonin

Long before crawfish and rice come together in a tasty etouffee on your dining room table, they’re a perfect match in the fields of countless farming operations throughout South Louisiana.

“They work really well together because rice is an aquatic plant, and the seasons are exactly opposite each other,” said Mark Frugé, with Frugé Aquafarms in Branch. “So you can grow rice and seed the crawfish into it during the slower part of the crawfish season. And the crawfish have no detrimental effect on the rice crop, so they go hand-in-hand perfectly.”

At Frugé Aquafarms, we typically farm about 1,200 acres of crawfish and 1,200 acres of rice each year.

In March, when the crawfish harvest is ramping up in our crawfish ponds, rice seed is planted in the fields designated for that year’s rice crop. When the rice gets to be about 6-inches tall, water is pumped in and the fields are kept in permanent flood until mid-summer, when preparations begin for the rice harvest in August.

As the rice continues to grow through the spring, it provides cooling shade to the water in the ponds. And in May, live mudbugs are seeded into those rice-cooled fields to create next year’s crawfish crop.

“The crawfish mate in the open waters of the rice field, then begin to burrow down beneath the rice to ride out the summer heat in the safety of their burrows,” Mark said. “That way they’re safe when the combines come through to harvest the rice in August.”

The rice crop continues to grow through the heat of summer, eventually topping out around waist-high. In mid-July, water in the rice fields is drained so the fields have time to dry out before harvest begins.

Combines harvest the upper one-third to one-half of the rice stalk, and then separate the grain from the stalk. The straw is blown back into the fields, while the grain is collected in a large hopper behind the combine.

Eventually the grain is transported to giant storage bins, where it’s dried with heated air.  When the moisture content reaches about 12%, it is ready to be transported to a local mill for processing.

When the rice harvest is complete, crawfish again take center stage here on the farm. Preparations are made to begin the process of re-flooding the rice fields so the crawfish burrowed beneath them will come out with their babies and begin feeding on the recently cut rice stubble.  Levees damaged during the rice harvest are repaired, and the old crawfish ponds are re-leveled to remove boat ruts in anticipation of the following year’s rice crop.

So that’s how a typical year is spent out here on Frugé Aquafarms. Things kick off with crawfish harvest from about January through June. Rice is planted in March, and harvested in August. In September, the rice fields are re-flooded and the crawfish come out of their burrows to feed on the rice stubble. Depending on weather conditions and temperatures, the crawfish harvest could begin late in the fall, and the whole process starts over.

There are lots of uncontrollable factors in the farming business, but under optimum conditions with Mother Nature’s help, we can produce up to 9,000,000 pounds of rice and 1,000,000 pounds of crawfish in a typical year out here on the farm.

Just think about how much etouffee that could make!

May 2, 2012
By Patrick Bonin

Crawfish, like people, come in a variety of shapes and sizes. Some have big pincers. Others have small claws. Some crawfish are so big they look like little lobsters. Others never reach “monster” size and stay on the smaller side their entire lives.

Lots of factors, including water quality, available food supply, population, genetics and even the weather, can determine how big an individual eventually gets.

But regardless of their final size, all crawfish go through a specific life cycle as they grow and mature here at Frugé Aquafarms in Branch, LA.

As both the air and water temperature begin to steadily rise with the approach of summer here in south Louisiana, that process is about to start up again as the crawfish prepare to mate.

But we do our best to stay one step ahead of the mudbugs: that’s why we’ve already begun seeding next year’s ponds with the crawfish that will create the 2013 crop. (To read more about pond stocking which is happening right now on the farm, click here.)

LSU Ag Center picture of a crawfish burrow.

In the coming weeks, crawfish will begin mating in the open waters of our rice fields. (The growing rice crop helps to shade the water and keep it cool, which is more to the crawfish’s liking.) After mating has occurred, both males and females will eventually begin to dig their individual burrows beneath the rice fields to escape the intense summer heat. As the female prepares her burrow and digs in, the eggs in her ovary are released, fertilized and attached to the swimmerets on the underside of her tail.

Once sealed in, crawfish are confined to the burrow until the hard plug that seals the entrance is softened by moisture from pond flooding or rainfall.

Flooded rice field

While all this is happening below ground, we are making preparations on the surface for our rice crop. The water that was in the rice fields is typically drained around the middle of July to prepare for the coming rice harvest. (Don’t worry: while the rice is harvested with large combines, the crawfish are safe in their burrows beneath the pond.)

It’s during this “dry period” in the pond in July and August that rainfall is critical for crawfish production. A drought can severely impact the survival rate of crawfish deep in their burrows.

LSU Ag Center picture of a femaie crawfish with eggs

After the rice crop is harvested in August, we wait until the cooler temperatures of late September to re-flood the fields. If everything went according to plan, we will begin seeing the females emerging from their burrows with baby crawfish the size of ants attached under their tails. (Each female can produce from 400 to 900 hatchlings, and can reproduce multiple times in a season.)

The young crawfish emerge each fall in a field of fresh water and rice stubble, a perfect environment for them to grow and mature quickly. In about 90 to 120 days, after molting several times, they will reach market size. That brings us to the November/December timeframe, and depending on the weather, the crawfish harvest will begin all over again and continue all the way into the following summer.

Under optimal conditions, crawfish typically live only about one to two years in the wild. But with any luck out here on the farm, they’ll make it to a pot near you one day during crawfish season here in south Louisiana!

By Patrick Bonin

Unfortunately, humans aren’t the only ones who enjoy a tasty meal of delicious Louisiana crawfish… It turns out plenty of wild animals do, too!

Before they ever make it into your favorite pot, crawfish have to avoid a whole host of predators while they grow up in our ponds, including herons, bullfrogs, snakes, turtles, raccoons and fish. Obviously, we do everything we can to keep our mudbugs safe and sound through harvest!

“With 1,200 acres of crawfish ponds here on the farm, you can bet there are all sorts of critters around who love crawfish just as much as people do,” said Mark Frugé, co-owner of Frugé Aquafarms in Branch, LA. “We don’t have too many issues, but it’s something we definitely have to stay on top of.”

One of the peskiest troublemakers on the farm is the raccoon, who can walk out into a pond and easily turn over 50 crawfish traps in a single night.

“That’s 50 traps that we can’t harvest the next day,” Mark said. “The raccoon might actually eat just a few crawfish, but they cost us money because they prevent us from harvesting our crop.”

Birds like herons and egrets sometimes perch on top of the crawfish traps, and simply stick their heads inside to eat the available crawfish or bait.  But a unique solution helps alleviate that problem.

“We use scare away cannons,” Mark said. “They’re powered by propane, and they have a timer you can set to determine how often they fire. The ‘boom’ keeps them moving, and helps to limit the damage they cause.”

And although the ponds are drained each year for about three to four months over the summer to allow for the rice harvest, perch, catfish and carp all manage to find their way into the water. For them, young crawfish make an ideal meal.

“I don’t think the fish are too much of a problem because they just don’t have the opportunity to get really big before the ponds are drained each summer, so they probably don’t have much of an impact,” he said.

But the most impactful troublemaker on the farm isn’t a direct threat to crawfish at all. Believe it or not, beavers and the dams they build cost the farm lots of time and manpower.

“The beavers live in drainage canals adjacent to our crawfish ponds,” Mark said. “But they dam up our ponds’ overflow lines, which creates big problems for us. If we can’t drain our ponds, and they end up flooding over the levees, that’s a mess.”

The beavers’ aggressive dam building makes them especially troublesome.

“You can remove a dam from a pipe one day, and the beaver will replace it that night,” he said. “They’re very persistent, and they’re a real hassle to deal with.”

Typically, offending beavers and raccoons are trapped and relocated off of farm property. Bullfrogs and snapping turtles, two additional fans of crawfish commonly found out on the farm, are taken in accordance with hunting regulations here in south Louisiana.

So as you can tell, we aren’t the only ones with an appetite for fresh mudbugs. But rest assured we’ll keep doing our best to take care of them, so nothing else makes a meal out of ‘em before you do!

And the World Will Beat a Path to Your Door!

By Patrick Bonin

There are sand traps, mousetraps, steel traps, speed traps and trap doors… even Venus Flytraps!

But at Frugé Aquafarms, one of the most important pieces of equipment we use is the simple crawfish trap. It’s how we physically remove the mudbugs from the 1,200-acres of rice fields on our farm in Branch, La. and get them to our wholesale dock.

But to do the job right, it takes a lot of ‘em: we use about 11,000 traps in our farming operation! And during the peak of the season right now, each and every one of them is baited and emptied just about every single day!

At Frugé, we use a locally made pyramid trap, which has a triangular base that sits on the pond bottom. (An attached stake keeps the trap upright.) Three funnels located about 4-5 inches from the bottom of the trap are where the crawfish enter to eat the bait. Once the crawfish get in, it’s very difficult for them to hang on to the mesh and climb upside down to escape.

“Some people refer to a trap as a restaurant, and you’re only catching the ones that are still at the table,” said Mark Frugé, co-owner of Frugé Aquafarms. “There is probably a small percentage that find their way out. The smaller ones will eat and leave and pass through the wire. The ones that are marketable size stay in the trap because of the diameter of the mesh.”

Earlier in the season when the water temperatures are cool, cut fish like pogies, mackerel or shad are used to entice the mudbugs inside. Later, when water temps reach 70 degrees and above, we use an artificial bait pellet inside the traps.

“We use about a quarter-pound of bait per trap per day,” Frugé said. “During peak production times, we like to see a pound of crawfish per day inside each trap.”

At Frugé Aquafarms, we put out about 10 traps per surface acre. Traps are spaced about 50-feet apart in rows that are about 100-feet apart throughout the ponds. Crawfish are not territorial, so they move freely throughout the ponds every day, which increases the likelihood they’ll encounter a trap.

“The little crawfish get to the trap first and start feeding,” Frugé explained. “When the big ones come, they run the little ones off.”

Traps are worked each morning, then the crawfish are cleaned, graded and sacked at our wholesale dock on the farm that afternoon. To make sure we have enough mudbugs to keep everyone happy, that’s pretty much the process we stick to every day during crawfish season.

But what happens to the 11,000 or so traps when crawfish season ends in late June?

“Well, we used to clean them up and stockpile them in one spot on the farm,” Marks said with a laugh. “That just got to be too much. Now we spread them out in seven or eight locations. But don’t worry – they’ll be ready to go for next year.”

Dat's a big ol' Mudbug!

Louisiana crawfish are no strangers to a good party. A crawfish boil is often synonymous with winter/spring fun and sliding into summer. Thus, a boiling pot of potatoes, sausage, onions, corn, various seasonings, and a big batch of crawfish is the center of many a good time. However, the question still remains, what size crawfish are the best? Is bigger really better?

Some may argue that it isn’t the size of the crawfish that matters, but what you do with it. These might say that a skilled master boiler is far more important than crawfish size.

Yet, others will debate that. Some say that a smaller crawfish is just too sweet and delicious to pass up. On the other side of the coin, someone will invariably argue that bigger gives you more bang for your buck, and that nothing beats that big, meaty bite of this mighty crustacean.

Generally speaking, someone who is avidly seeking a particular size may, at times, find out that one or the other is more difficult to come by. Bigger is often graded as “select,” yet these need time to grow, and may not always be readily available. Hence, those for the small bites could argue that these sweet little “mudbugs” are the only way to go, for anyone with a love of crawfish.

‘Field Run” is another grading term that one could find regarding live crawfish. These are not necessarily graded for size. Some will be big, and some will be small. In this case, someone of the “bigger is better” mindset might still be inclined use the smallest ones for bait, much to the chagrin of those of his buddies who love those tender-yet-tiny and bite-sized crawfish.

Other sources will use the more standardized number system. This system throws a third option into the mix, with a medium size. This option offers the big crawfish labeled as grade one, with about 12 to 15 in a pound. Medium sizes are graded as number two, and will have about 16 to 20 in a pound. Small, labeled as number three, is the final grade, with upwards of 21 delicious crawfish in a pound.

In the end, the argument you come up against might still be the same. Although, once you are in this debate, you could ask your opponent if quantity might be as big a factor as anything.

Is bigger really better? Could more be better, too? It’s up to you to decide.

By Patrick D. Bonin BRANCH, LA.
Ideal growing conditions and a mild, wet winter thus far have set the stage for what is shaping up to be a bumper crawfish crop in south Louisiana.

“For 2012, everything I’m seeing right now indicates we’re lined up for a high production year,” said Mark Fruge’, co-owner of Fruge’ AquaFarms in Branch, located about 15 miles from Lafayette.“With these mild temperatures, the crawfish are ahead of schedule on their rate of growth and production levels because they’ve been so active. The industry as a whole is probably producing double where we’d normally be right now.” Above-average temperatures and plentiful rainfall have the tasty crustaceans believing that spring has already sprung, and crawfish traps throughout Cajun Country are bursting with the hungry mudbugs.

“The temperatures that we’ve been experiencing are like March temperatures, so the crawfish in the field are reacting as though it’s March,” Fruge’ said. “Industry-wide, the people I’ve spoken with are all having similar outcomes. Everyone is doing well production-wise, and we should see strong poundage-per-acre production numbers.”

That means good news for consumers, who could see reduced prices compared to recent years when below-average rainfall negatively affected production.

“It should be a great year with abundant and affordable crawfish,” said Mike Fruge’, Mark’s older brother and fellow co-owner of Fruge AquaFarms. “I’m predicting a very high volume season. The quality right now couldn’t be better, and it’s only going to improve as we head into the spring.”

Volume is so strong right now Mike said the farm actually stopped harvesting for one day last week. “That’s the first time in about five years we’ve had to stop production to let the market catch up,” he said. “At this time of the year, I don’t think that’s ever happened before.”

Typically, depending upon weather, the harvest will continue through late June or the first week of July. As the season progresses, Mike predicts crawfish will be more affordable than in recent years.

“Right now, the price at the wholesale level is about 30% less than it was at this time last year,” he said. “That transfers all the way down the line, so consumers should see lower prices as well.”

Over the past 29 years, the Fruge’ brothers have seen their original 20-acre crawfish pond expand into a working 2,400-acre farm which supplies a full-service seafood company covering major markets in Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana.

For more information on Fruge’ AquaFarms or the 2012 Louisiana crawfish season, contact Courtney Fruge’ 337.334.9620

With Mardi Gras quickly approaching, don’t miss out on one of the best parts of the season… it’s King Cake time!! This delicious woven bread with its delectable spices, fillings and frosting is a staple in Cajun culture. The best part is there’s a flavor for everyone… cream cheese, Bavarian cream, caramel, chocolate, German chocolate, lemon, raspberry, and strawberry!

Whether you’re bringing it home to enjoy with your family and friends or bringing it to work to start up a new tradition, it’s a great way to celebrate Mardi Gras and our Cajun traditions! Just make sure everyone knows the rule… Who every gets the baby, has to bring the next king cake!

We all know that crawfish are delicious, and some of you may realize that there is a “definite “season” for crawfish cooking and eating, but do you know what the life-cycle of these crawdads are? Now that crawfish season is finally upon us, lets look at just why these tasty little critters aren’t always available when we want them. The below info-graphic will give you insight into the life of a crawfish, how we grow them here at our farms, and how they end up in your cooking pot, or your table!

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<pre class="brush: xml"><a href="http://www.cajuncrawfish.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/lifecycleofacrawfish.png"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-366" title="LA crawfish life cycle " src="http://www.cajuncrawfish.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/lifecycleofacrawfish.png" alt="Crawfish Life Cycle Graphic" width="720" height="720" border="0" /></a></pre>

Crawfish are a famous dish around the world! Though you may not know them as craw fish, I’m sure you’ve seen the little critters… most of you have even tasted a few!

Most Cajuns typically use the term crawfish, but people have created multiple names for them.  Maybe you’re more familiar with the word crayfish, crawdads, and mud bugs. These terms are typically used more by people living anywhere north of South Louisiana. Another term you may be familiar with is écrevisse; this term was used by our French ancestors and is still used by some traditional Cajuns today.

One thing is for sure, no matter if you call them, craw fish, écrevisse, crayfish crawfish, crawdads or just mud bugs, we love them! Can wait for Cajun Crawfish season 2012… coming soon!!

Laissez la Crawfish roulez!