Domesticated Trout
TROUT-BREEDING WORKS.
Domesticated Trout – WHEN the writer of the following pages asked Seth Green, in 1866, ” how many of those who engaged in trout breeding would succeed,” he answered, with his well-known quickness of manner, ” One in a million.” There was so much wanting.
* How fully the word ” domesticated ” will finally apply to trout that are bred and grown artificially, time alone can decide.
It is still a very doubtful question whether they will ever be- come so accustomed and attached to the habitations of man that they will prefer to remain around his homes and under his protection, like dogs and fowls, and so become in the strictest sense domestic creatures.
Still, this result is not impossible, perhaps not improbable.
Cattle and horses become as wild as buffaloes and deer
when left to run wild long enough. Artificial influences have
given these creatures their domestic habits. Why may not a
A sufficiently long course of similar influences creates a similar change in the habits of trout.
Trout are not naturally averse to man in their primitive wildness, before they have learned to fear him. I have seen wild trout in the uninhabited forests of New Brunswick as little disposed to avoid man as sheep in a pasture. Why, then, may we not, by taking away their fear of man through domestication, restore that time, in the knowledge required to ensure success, that Mr. Green’s reply was hardly an exaggeration.
Since that time, however, the whole aspect of the matter has been changed, and the care and study bestowed on the subject have evolved a set of rules and principles, the careful observance of which will render a degree of success almost certain.
I think it may safely be said that the time has come when trout can be hatched, reared, and brought to maturity in great numbers and with comparatively little loss ; and I think it is also safe to say that success in raising the fish will of necessity be accompanied by pecuniary success while the present relations exist between the prices of trout and the cost of the food on which they are reared.