Denver, Colorado (KDVR) — Even though crawfish boils are authorized in Colorado this year, finding mudbugs may be difficult.
Farmers in Louisiana are worried that due of the drought and other weather-related factors, this may be the worst crawfish harvest season ever. The crawfish populations that are usually present at this time of year are not visible to farmers in their fields.
The scarcity of crawfish is causing Louisianan farmers to target historically high prices. According to a well-known app called the Crawfish App, the average cost of cooked crawfish in the state last week was $12.99 per pound, which is almost twice as much as it went for in 2023.
The majority of the items at the Louisiana Crawfish Company’s web store appear to be sold out, while cooked crawfish was available for $14.59 per pound.
By cultivating rice in shallow water and adding crawfish to burrow below, crawfish farmers harvest the mudbugs. A female crawfish will deposit 400–900 eggs if the temperature is correct. However, the dryness of the previous year made it impossible for farmers to flood some fields, and the extreme heat made the ground too hard for the animals to bury themselves in the muck. Cold fronts that have just passed have also had an influence on crops that have been growing recently.
The best time to harvest crawfish for farmers is in the spring, usually between December and June.