New England Salmon Hatcheries and Salmon Fisheries in the Late 19th CenturyVarious
History
New England Salmon Hatcheries and Salmon Fisheries in the Late 19th Century
Various
Fish hatcheries -- New England; Fisheries -- New England; Salmon -- New England
When young salmon or trout first begin to feed they are quite unable to
swallow full-grown maggots. Small ones are obtained for them by putting
a large quantity of fly spawn with a small quantity of meat, the result
being that the maggots soon begin to crowd each other and the surplus
is worked off into the lower box before attaining great size. No
attempt is, however, made to induce the young fish to swallow even the
smallest maggots until they have been fed a while an chopped liver.
In the above methods maggots are produced and used in considerable
numbers, sometimes as many as a bushel in a day. Through September,
1893, although the weather and some other circumstances were not very
favorable, the average daily production was a little over half a
bushel.
They are eagerly eaten by the fish, which appear to thrive on them
better than on dead meat. Having great tenacity of life, if not snapped
up immediately by the fish they remain alive for a day or two, and, as
they wriggle about on the bottom, are almost certain to be finally
eaten; whereas the particles of dead flesh that fall to the bottom are
largely neglected by the fish and begin to putrefy in a few hours. In
the fish troughs there are, therefore, certain gains in both
cleanliness and economy from the use of maggots which may be set down
as compensating the waste and filthiness of the fly-house.
As the growth of maggots can be controlled by regulation of the
temperature, it is possible to keep them all winter in a pit or cellar,
and advantage is taken of this to use them during winter as food for
fish confined in deep tanks not easily cleaned.
The offensive odors of decaying flesh may be largely overcome by
covering it, on putting it away in the boxes, after the visits of the
flies, with pulverized earth, and it is not improbable that by this or
some other method the business may be made almost wholly inoffensive,
but in its present stage of development it is too malodorous to admit
of practice in any place where there are human habitations or resorts
within half a mile of the spot where the maggots are grown.
As remarked above, only flesh-eating maggots have yet been tried. It
would be well worth while to experiment with the larvae of other
species, such as the house fly, the stable fly, etc. There is also a
white maggot known to grow in heaps of seaweed. Should the rate of
growth of either of these species be found to be satisfactory they
might be substituted for the flesh maggots with advantage.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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