Jeff Davis Parish Offers Crawfish Farm Tours • By Madelaine B. Landry
“The good news for this year is that we seem to be off to a good start with lots of females full of eggs emerging on time and with much better conditions in the ponds.”
So many tales in literature are set in caves and subterranean underworlds, demonstrating the ages-old fascination people have for these dark places. In Homer’s ancient Greek epic poem, The Odyssey, Odysseus and his crew are returning home after war when they stumble on a cave filled with a hearty spread of meat and cheese. Unfortunately, the cave belongs to a most unpleasant cyclops named Polyphemus.
In J.R.R. Tolkien’s second book of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, the dwarf Gimli delivers a long, poetic speech about the “glittering caves” of Aglarond. The misty-eyed Gimli waxes eloquent about its “immeasurable halls” and “veins of precious ore.” C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia series depict a fantasy world where real-world children mingle with talking animals. In the fourth book, The Silver Chair, the children explore a subterranean world called Underland.
You might understand then, why seeing strange clay chimneys crop up overnight in one’s yard can be a marvelous mystery just waiting to be unraveled. What secrets hide inside these various mounds of mud?
If crawfish chimneys pique your curiosity, you might consider taking a tour of a Louisiana crawfish farm during harvesting season. Rest assured, there are many delectable secrets, mysterious creatures by the pound, and a potential feast, all waiting to be revealed!
Annually, during the March through May crawfish harvesting season, the Jeff Davis Parish Tourist Commission offers field trips and group tours for tourists and crawfish fans.
The tour begins with a visit to Tall Grass Farm, where crawfish habitat and the harvesting process are showcased by owner Burt Tietje. Visitors hear about the biology of the species. Tietje also shares information about the crawfish’s dietary needs and habits and about pond ecology. He shows off the farm’s harvesting equipment, as well, and explores how the tasty crustaceans are marketed to the rest of the world.
The tour continues at the I-10 Cooperative, where the cleaning, grading and distribution process is demonstrated. How much labor is involved in getting enough mudbugs together for a crawfish boil? What role does Louisiana’s culture, history and environment play in the crawfish sector of the state’s food economy? By the time the tour ends at the Gator Chateau, you will know the answers to these questions and more.
According to the website jeffdavis.org/attractions/crawfish-farm-tours, even the crawfish’s neighbors, the gators, are part of the teaching process.
“When your group arrives at the Gator Chateau, one of our alligator handlers will give a lesson on the gators — everything from their habitat, what they eat, how they grow, to how we care for them at our facility,” reads the website. “After the lesson, you can hold one of our baby gators and take a picture with them.”
Visitors will want to check out the new gift shop in the visitor center, where they can purchase gator souvenirs to help support the farm’s gator program.
The tour is $10 per person for ages 3 and older. Teachers, bus drivers and home school organizers can accompany their groups free of charge.
Tietje is the third generation of his family to own and work Tall Grass Farm. His grandfather came to the state of Iowa from Germany at age 14 in 1882. By 1890, he had made his way to this corner of Louisiana and settled the farm. Back then, it was virgin tall grass prairie with the same flora and fauna that was found in the vast midwestern prairies. Rice was a new crop to cultivate for the northern grain farmers who moved here from the Midwest. The first rice on the farm was produced about 1895.
“We did not grow crawfish on this farm when I grew up,” recalls Tietje. “We produced rice, cattle and, later, soybeans. By the time I got back to the farm, Dad had sold the cattle, and soybeans proved to be a hit-or-miss crop. We had our first crop of crawfish in 1995. At that time, producing crawfish made you a bit of an oddball.”
Times have certainly changed. By 2000, Tietje notes, crawfish accounted for only 2 percent of farm revenue in the parish. Now, nearly a quarter of a century later, that figure has grown to 46 to 48 percent, which rivals rice crops in terms of economic importance.
“Crawfish is the perfect complementary crop for rice,” says Tietje. “Crawfish are seeded into the green rice (plants) in June. Prior to harvest, the rice fields are drained, and the crawfish bury themselves in the mud. The rice is harvested in August while the crawfish remain buried in the ground. As temperatures cool in the fall, the fields are flooded, and the crawfish emerge into the new pond. The females have laid eggs underground and have them gathered on their tails. The eggs hatch there and remain on the female’s tail until they are large enough to leave and begin life on their own.”
Tietje explains to his tour groups how this early pond development period is critical to a successful crop of crawfish. The water must be cool with an adequate supply of dissolved oxygen for the tiny new wave of crawfish to thrive.
“In 2024, the drought probably killed a lot of crawfish down in their burrows,” he notes. “Then when we flooded up, temperatures were still too hot, (which) robbed the water of a lot of dissolved oxygen, and our first wave of little crawfish died. We had no crawfish to sell in January and February, and just a little production in March and April. May saw an explosion of crawfish when later waves of baby crawfish finally grew to a marketable size.
“By then, however, consumers were tired of the high prices and limited supply. The whole season was just a disaster for both consumers and farmers. The good news for this year is that we seem to be off to a good start with lots of females full of eggs emerging on time and with much better conditions in the ponds. Look for a plentiful supply this season and get out there and enjoy the crawfish you missed last season!”
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