Crazy Crayfish!

I was having trouble finding out what to raise on Critter Corner this year, but after some thinking I decided to try to raise crawdads! My plan was to raise around three hundred crawdads this summer, and when fall came, we could eat them. I fixed up a place on Critter Corner and then went out to catch some crawdads.

The first day, I went down to the creek and looked for some crawdads there but did not find any. The second day, I went to the pond, took a garden rake, and started raking out the sunken leaves from the water. In doing this, I not only clean the pond of sticks and leaves that fall in but catch any small fish and crawdads hiding in them. I raked for a long time, only stopping to catch a crawdad, and put it in my bucket and to return a fish accidentally raked out, back into the water. When I was finished, I had caught 17 crawdads! I was so excited. By the end of the week, I had caught 42 crawdads! That’s a lot.

Once I had caught the crawdads, I put all 42 of them into the place I had prepared. Step one, catching crawdads complete. Now for step two, feeding them. Crawdads, also known as crayfish, eat almost anything including dead rotting animals and plants. Knowing this, I caught some small fish and cut up a carrot. I put them both into the crawdads’ pen. It took the critters a few days to realize that this was their food, but once they learned, they started catching the fish and eating the carrots! I think they liked it.

About a week later, I captured a full-grown crawdad and without thinking put him in with the smaller ones! The numbers of my crawdads began to grow smaller as the bigger crawdad slowly ate the others! 

By the time I found out, I had lost 17 crawdads! I removed the big animal and put it into a separate container.

In total, I now have 28 crayfish. All I need is 272 more! I think I must start catching more. Better get going!

~Samuel