Hi Guys,

Well we went down to the old man’s farm in Pingelly about 180km east of Perth for Christmas so I decided this would be a good opportunity to get a feed of yabbie’s.

When I was home earlier in the year for seeding I was throwing a few nets in to spread a few yabbie’s around to dams that had gone dry over the summer. I had read somewhere that if you put all male yabbie’s in a dam that they would grow 30% quicker so I decided to give it a go in one of our bigger dams that had nothing in it.

Over about a week I was setting the nets in the morning and pulling them at night after knocking off and sorting the yabbie’s between males and females. I would chuck the males in the one dam and chuck the females back in other dams. I ended up putting 2-3 20L buckets full of males ranging from about 40-100mm in the dam.

So mid afternoon on Christmas eve I decided to head down and throw some nets in to get a feed on Christmas day. I threw about 5 nets in the dam that I had stocked with males and put a few other nets in some other dams that I knew were reliable just in case there was nothing in this dam.

At about mid morning on Christmas day I was getting a bit anxious so I decided to go and pull the nets. Because I hadn’t checked the dam with the males in it since I re stocked it I wasn’t sure if we’d get a heap or none at all.

As I pulled the first net in there were two big yabbie’s on top of the net so I knew there were some in there. When I pulled the net out of the water I was happy to see a net full of good size yabbie’s. I pulled the remaining nets in for the same result.

We got about 2 20L buckets full of good yabbies so we filled one bucket and chucked the rest back for next time. We went and pulled the other nets and would have got another bucket full but because we already had more than enough we chucked all them back as well.

On the way back to the house I threw a few nets in a dam with lots of small yabbie’s in so I could sort the males from the females and restock the male dam.

When we got back to the house we cracked a beer and cooked the yabbie’s. Once they were cooked we sat around the table with a few beers and had our best crack at putting them away. We got about halfway through before we were all full so we chucked the rest in the fridge for boxing day.

I couldn’t think of a better way to spend a nice relaxing Christmas.

nice effort ....interested to hear about the male yabbies growing faster

do u catch any little yabbies in the dam you stocked with the males at all....just wondering if any females founf there way into the dam somehow ?

great feed there dags , would went well with few brews

Barra Mick- Nah there were no little yabbie's or females. This dam's at the top of the catchment so i can't see any getting in there unless they were there from last time the dam was stocked. We had a storm and it washed a heap of straw and sheep sh#t in the dam and this is what killed all the yabbies to start with. I think the key with yabbies in farm dams is to keep the population down so that there's plenty of food to go around. Once they breed up to much you don't seem to get any real good size ones. That's what i've found anyway.

Kurt- Yep bit of thousand island sauce and quite a few cans of export that day.

Good to see a Post from home mate. Can't beat a feed of yabbies, unless theyr'e from someone elses dam any Aus. Day Ravy trip planned this year? If so pack spare bungs

Hey Muntzy. Yeah booked into the Ravy again for 3 nights. Yeah i think we'll be onto the bungs this time. I'm sure there'll be something go wrong but.