Hog Barn Converted to Aquaculture Facility

Ohio Brothers Catch the Excitement of Fish Farming

JAYNE GEST
Ohio Correspondent

BELLEVUE, Ohio — Just breaking the surface, thousands of mouths gape open in a swarm of golden-orange bodies, fins flashing and tails colliding into each other. Looking at the six tanks filled with 72,000 gallons of water and more than 150,000 goldfish, it’s hard to believe just a few years ago the building was a hog nursery.

The Yingling brothers, Tom and John, at Woodside Farms in Bellevue, Ohio are among the farmers who have joined the growing trend of aquaculture, switching from raising traditional farm animals to fish.

Tom and John are fourth generation hog farmers who also farm 1,500 acres. In the 1990s with the dramatic drop in hog prices, the Yinglings looked around for something else to rear and after considering other niche markets like alpacas and Boer goats, the brothers settled on fish.

In 2002, the Yinglings started raising food fish, specifically bluegill, large-mouth bass and yellow perch. Using a tank system based on a farm in Maryland that they later customized, the goal for the first year was to not kill all the fish.

Shawn McWhorter, a research associate and aquaculture specialist with The Ohio State University Extension South Center in Bowling Green, said that raising fish is very difficult because they are tied so closely to their environment.

“It’s like having a henhouse with feces flying around in the air,” McWhorter said.

When fish are raised indoors in recirculating systems, the water quality and temperature have to be maintained all the time. Also, biofilters break ammonia and nitrite into forms less harmful to fish. McWhorter said he has an emergency system that monitors the oxygen levels, sound and temperature on his tanks 24 hours a day because if something goes wrong it will only be about 15 minutes until fish start to die.

At Woodside Farms, Tom and John found that with food fish they had to process and deliver the finished product to local restaurants in order to make money, which meant more time and labor. Keep in mind, Tom said, that traditionally farmers are great at production, but not so good at marketing.

Last year, they moved in a new direction and started raising baitfish, specifically goldfish that are later sold as bait for catfish in southern Ohio. After buying 2- to 3-inch fingerlings, they sell them about 8 months later at 6 to 8 inches. It’s comparable to buying heavy feeder cattle.

Tom said baitfish are cheaper to buy and fed and worth more to sell. They can raise a higher volume and have no processing costs. “We get a call on Wednesday, our buyer picks them up on Thursday and right away we get a check,” he said.

Another advantage to goldfish is the heartiness of the species. The Yinglings discovered that yellow perch are very nervous and have a low tolerance to pain. If the lights flicker on and off or if the fish hit the side of tank, they start to die. Goldfish, on the other hand can tolerate poor water quality and harsher living conditions.

With goldfish, visitors from bus tours can walk down the platforms between the tanks and the fish come right up out of the water because they think they are going to be fed.

Getting Started
Of fish farming, John Yingling said, “We have people come in and say ‘It’s great. I want to start tomorrow,’ but it’s not that easy.”

Tom and John did two years of research on aquaculture, reading literature and visiting other successful farms across the country, before they bought their first fish. Looking back today, John still says, “We jumped in with both feet.”

It would have been easier to start with a smaller recirculating system before installing the large ones that the Yinglings used. John said when dealing with your bank you either need a lot of collateral like farmland, which can be risky, or a proven track record on a small scale so you can get the money you need for a larger investment.

The Yinglings spent as much money as they would have for a new combine to get started with their aquaculture business and luckily had a good relationship with their banker, Tom said.

One of the most important steps to choosing a site is to decide what kind of water the system will run on. Although well water is often the best, the Yingling brothers use pond water because of poor well water in their area. They have 185 acres of fields that are systemically tiled to run into a catch basin during their off-season when they are not using fertilizer on their fields. The water is then pumped from the basin to two ponds near the barns. They actually use less water then when they raised hogs, but have to add sodium bicarbonate.

Although recirculating systems offer a great degree of control over the fish, the main disadvantage is the initial capital investment. McWhorter said that a big problem he comes across is people who want to build their own systems, which is not usually technically feasible.

There are two schools of thought on recirculating systems, McWhorter said. Some people build their systems in unused barns, but the buildings sometimes need to be updated. Others will pick a system and then build the shell around it.

The Yinglings were lucky because they already had some of the infrastructure in place such as buildings, an old manure pit for discharge from the filters and waste handling equipment. They also had the help of their agricultural production background. “Everybody’s system is different. People couldn’t tell us exactly what we needed,” Tom said.

The Glamour of It All
Aquaculture is still several decades behind traditional livestock husbandry in research and development. Other countries such as Norway and Israel are more advanced than the U.S. because there is more political backing and subsidies.

McWhorter said it’s kind of a “catch-22” because politicians don’t get involved unless the industry is producing large amounts of money with many people, but people won’t start until they can get subsidies that come from politicians.

Despite obstacles, there are many reasons why farmers are switching to aquaculture. In many places the ocean is being fished at or above its sustainability while the global population is still growing and the benefits to eating fish are increasingly important to the health conscious Americans.

In Ohio, the aquaculture industry has grown from $1.8 million in sales in 1998 to $3.2 million in 2005, according to a study by The Ohio State University and published in the Journal of Food Science.

McWhorter said there are also few corporate fish farms so it’s a relatively open industry. It has the appeal of being fascinating and mysterious to many farmers, leading to a “gold-rush mentality.”

“Kids are tired of corn and soybeans because how many rows can you plow?” he said.

As a part of his job McWhorter helps new farmers get started with aquaculture, but many people think raising fish is going to be easy, a misconception that he corrects all the time. “People think it they put the fish in a tank and throw in some food, they’re going to make money,” he said.

If farmers aren’t good livestock managers already, they won’t make good fish farmers, he pointed out. They need a fair level of technical expertise and also knowledge of chemistry. Overall, McWhorter has talked more people out of aquaculture because if banks see failure after failure, it will hurt the industry as a whole.

What’s Next?
Tom and John raise all of their fish indoors because they have a year-long growing season. Their fish are also easier to monitor in the controlled environment.

However, in the future they will be expanding their operation outside. The Yinglings have just finished digging four small ponds that they plan to use to spawn their own goldfish and carp.

Tom and John have 14 smaller tanks filled with various other fish, including carp and koi to be sold as ornamental fish. They have started to experiment with their own breeding by trying to get these fish to spawn.

Tom said there are tricks to getting the fish to spawn outside of season. Fish react to both temperature and light. If the Yinglings turn off the lights, it will cause spawning, but also the fish will start jumping out of the tank.

When fish are outside, the phases of the moon actually affect when the fish spawn.

Another obstacle is having the right equipment to keep the newly hatched fry from going through the filters and out with the discharge. After losing fish through mosquito netting and cheesecloth, the Yinglings had to install a different pumping system.

Despite all their plans, both brothers have to remember to keep from trying it all because they’re still learning. “Be careful not to do too much or you will end up doing nothing,” Tom said.

Just like any new business, fish farmers don’t get instant success either. After almost four years in the fish business, the Yinglings probably won’t be making a profit for another year or so. “The jury is still out, but I think we will be (successful),” Tom said. “We’re still as excited today as when we started.”