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Greers Ferry National Fish Hatchery receives over a million rainbow trout eggs from August through March to sustain a 16 to 18 month fish production cycle. Eggs are produced at Erwin National Fish Hatchery, a federal trout broodstock broodstock
The reproductively mature adults in a population that breed (or spawn) and produce more individuals (offspring or progeny).
Learn more about broodstock hatchery, and shipped to the hatchery in the "eyed egg" stage of development. At this stage, the eyes of the developing fish are visible within the egg and it signals hatching is just a few days away.
The trout eggs incubate in hatching jars and hatch into sac fry (alevin) in 10-14 days depending on the hatchery's water temperature. Within a month, the sac fry have absorbed their yolk sacs and develop into fry. This life stage could be thought of as the “toddler” period of the young trout.
Daily care of rainbow trout fry is time consuming and one of the most labor intensive activities at the hatchery. The fry require five to six feedings a day and the rearing tanks cleaned daily. It takes the young fry about 16 months to grow to an average length of 11-inches long. At that length, the trout are released into cold tailwaters below U.S. Army Corps of Engineers dams in Arkansas and eastern Oklahoma for the fishing enjoyment of the public.
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