I had arranged to help sort out the broodstock at the Ayr hatchery today and sort out the pairings for the few fish we had collected. In all we stripped 5 hens today and covered them with 3 cocks.
While this doesn’t seem many, we chose fish very carefully from areas where we expect the greatest benefit may be achieved by our intervention. You will see tags in some of the photos that we used to ensure that fish from the same areas were bred with each other rather than mixing up genes from all over the river. I’m still no fan of hatcheries but given the desperate situation in some areas of the river Ayr, it seemed worthwhile to attempt careful intervention. Time will tell and we aim to monitor success (or failure) as best we can.
