It’s been a busy time on the oyster farm. Over the past couple of months we have been laying oyster seed on our oyster beds and I thought you might be interested to see how we grow oysters.
It starts with the oyster beds
We start by clearing as many of oysters that are on the beds as possible, taking them to the Fishery to be washed and graded. The oyster boats then drag chains over the layings to disturb the layer of mud that has built up over the past year to reveal the hard ground made up of crushed shells and gravel that’s been laid down over the last hundred or so years.
Growing oysters from seed
We buy in oyster seed, young oysters that are specifically grown to be sold to oyster farms like us, to supplement the oysters that spawn naturally. This year we have laid a little over 3 millions oysters in different sizes of seed. This is the largest of the seed that we hope to be able to dredge in the late summer/early autumn, as oysters grow so fast during the warmer weather.
As you can see the seed is really quite big, this means it should grow quickly, but as the oysters are bigger, they are stronger.
The oysters have many predators in the river, star fish, tingles, birds and crabs to name just a few, so the stronger and bigger the oyster the better chance they have grow big enough to sell.
Just throw them in the water and hope for the best
It’s obviously a bit more complicated than that, but thats the gist. We empty the bags of oyster seed down chutes off the back of the boat when we are over the layings.
The wash from the boats propeller helps to spread the oyster seed out so it falls onto the oyster beds gently and evenly. When it lands on the beds, the ground is hard so the oysters won’t move too much in the tide.
How are they growing?
We leave the oyster seed alone for about a month to settle, then because we are excited to see what’s happening under the water, we go and take a look. As the oysters are on the layings and therefore underwater, we gently dredge along the beds where the oyster seed is and collect a couple of samples.
You can see the new growth already, it’s the frilly edges of the shell with the black and white stripes. We are really pleased they are growing so well, but you don’t want an oyster with all frill and no meat.
Over the coming months we will gently turn the oysters over, this does a number of things, one being it gently chips the frilly edges of the shells to make the oysters stronger. This also slows down the growth of the shell so the meat can catch up. By disturbing the oysters, any that have attached themselves together are separated.
What about wild oysters?
We have areas of the river which we leave for wild oysters to grow with as little intervention from us as possible, but I’ll tell you about those another time.