It used to be that farmers crossed " The biggest with the best and hope for the rest". While much of this rings true, it also brings up points about how producers regard broodstock.

Fewer farms exist with single sites. Most of the producers are multi-site, multinational and vertically integrated (self-sufficient in smolts, cage sites, feed and processing). This is indicative of a maturing industry. As well, it is clear that there is a distinction between operational roles within a company: hatchery, growout, administration, processing and operations. However, what is missing in many production operations is the identification of seed supply.

In the poultry industry, there are maybe a handful of brood houses. They supply chicks nationwide for growout according to the need expressed by the grower. This is similar with swine. There are fewer than a dozen companies that supply the majority of the growers with weaners. In cattle, ampoules of semen can be purchases from bulls long dead to create the perfect calf. In sheep, we have Dolly to clone; the rest are at the mercy of their keepers.

The point is this: agro-industries have secured and assured seed supply. Brood barns are off limits to anyone but a few. Conditions are kept optimal to minimize environmental effects on selection. Breeding stock is regarded with the highest priority.

In salmon farming, there is progress towards having broodstock regarded as an asset, but the majority of the industry regards broodstock as a ‘cost center’, not a ‘revenue center’. This sentiment is further compounded by the mental separation of freshwater and seawater operations. Bad harvest; blame smolt quality. Bad fertility; blame brood quality. This line of thinking permeates the industry and is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Many farms still select broodstock at the last harvest. The hatchery can hold ‘X’ million eggs, 50/50 gender spit, 10,000 eggs per hen and keep a few more for mortality and fudge-factor. Maybe a further few big fish are pulled from the harvest and placed in the ‘brood pen’. So, selection is based on survival to harvest, the last pen to grow to harvest size in the most amount of time and the shear chance of not getting sucked up into the wellboat.

From the seawater manager’s perspective, selection of broodstock takes time and money. Further, keeping a pen of brood cuts production by occupying space. By taking space on a farm, production is cut by an amount worse than the value of the pen: brood takes feed, care and maintenance that doesn’t translate into pounds produced.

With this thinking, production pens are given priority in terms of siting. The pens with the best flow and greatest depth grow better. Broodstock are commonly relegated to the pens closest shore and furthest away from the feed shed. Moreover, the broodstock have a special diet. This is ordered in 10 tonne lots to last a whole season. So, the feed doesn’t get put into the automated system, gets put out of the way in the shed, has to manually brought to the pen and fed by hand or into a hopper feeder. Therefore feeding the brood is not going to be a priority. If the brood do get fed it’s later, infrequent and of compromised quality.

From a larger perspective, multi-year class sites are not the best either. Better they be kept on a location all to themselves. Sometimes these brood sites are those deemed not suitable for production fish, but are OK for the next generation of production. The thinking here is that if they can survive life on a site with poor conditions, think of how the offspring will fair on a good site! That sound you hear is Darwin rolling over in his grave.

The present attitude is by no means the purview of the seawater crowd. No hatchery manager wants those filthy, fuzzy females in their clean freshwater tanks. Like seawater sites, brood take up production space and cause too much cleaning up after they are gone. As well, there is no joy in receiving eggs from 500 females after a day of cleaning and feeding fry and parr.

Bean counters have broodstock on the books longer than any other stock. They represent a necessary liability that only diminishes when they are spawned. And they cost money before they yield product (eggs). Other fish add value when you harvest them, broodstock seem to incur cost at every step. To their credit, the asset of broodstock is carried over to the next production year.

Enough negativism. Clearly, a paradigm shift is needed in dealing with broodstock. They need to be seen as a future, not a present. If this means incentive programmes for seawater sites, or value for freshwater staff, then it must happen in the company’s context. Broodstock must not be neglected and must be given due regard with respect to growing conditions; the harvestable commodity is eggs and milt, not meat.

From an animal welfare perspective, broodstock have distinct rearing requirements that exceed production fish. The rearing sites must be the best, not the worst. Bad site selection grows bad eggs, not tougher ones. If you were to select for poor growing conditions over thousands of generations, the product would be carp. These are salmon.

The best broodstock sites are integrated with production. Broodstock families are grown in production lots along side production fish. After the second selection and assessment, families are selected and transferred to a broodstock ongrowing site. The farm is credited with the production value and the debt carried to the broodstock programme. The return on investment for these fish comes a year later as an assessed value for the ova. At the broodstock site, conditions are optimized with regard to density, feed and feeding, net size etc. This farm runs on the production of ova and incurs cost until spawning. Most of these sites are multi-age class.

A few of the bigger companies have brood-only hatcheries. This has obvious advantages: cost center, biosecurity, expertise and efficiency. Some smaller farmers have formed cooperatives. Indeed, the largest brood producer in the world is a cooperative.