The destinations of the 'green' eggs are Barcaldine itself, Knock on the Isle of Mull, or Girlsta in Shetland.
Craig stephen
Scottish Sea Farms has notified the successful delivery of the first batch of 'green' eggs at its new £2 million incubation unit at Barcaldine Hatchery. This unit is expressly designed to accommodate eggs immediately after stripping so the earliest days of the production cycle are fully controlled.
"We trialed two, smaller test batches in Q4 2023 ahead of receiving our first full intake of around three million 'green' eggs during Christmas. These were fertilized on arrival at the new unit," clarified Head of Freshwater Rory Conn.
To ensure the success of fertilization, the company evaluated the first 24 hours up to checking embryonic development around the 60-day stage. Also, after the eggs reach the eyed ova stage will suffer more quality checks to guarantee that only the viable ones are transferred to the incubation trays and subsequently to the hatcheries.
The length of time eggs remain in the incubation unit before being transferred to the hatcheries usually is six weeks to five months. This period is longer than the usual one because of the lower temperatures.
Regarding this, Con explained: "We have taken the temperature down to below 2°C which, research suggests, results in better outcomes for fish health later on, particularly cardiac health."
"From the results to date, we know already that the quality of water in the 'green' egg unit has mitigated a number of the issues we had been seeing with our intakes of eyed ova," he added.
Moreover, the unit works with the same RAS (recirculating aquaculture system) technology and water that the company’s neighboring Barcaldine Hatchery.
The destinations of the 'green' eggs are Barcaldine itself, Knock on the Isle of Mull, or Girlsta in Shetland.
During next season, Scottish Sea Farms plans to produce a significant amount of eggs through the new unit. Achieving three batches a year, it could potentially hold 20 million eggs annually, the company specified.
"From this initial batch alone, we will be able to put close to 600,000 smolts into one of our marine farms at the required time – around late August next year. Without the 'green' egg unit, it simply wouldn’t have been possible to produce smolts from Scottish-sourced ova at this time of year," the Head of Freshwater highlighted.
Finally, he concluded: "The facility is delivering what we expected it to do with this first batch and I’m confident that we will be able to produce the number of eggs we need to meet our smolt requirements."