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Our services at Riverfield Fish Farm cover the whole spectrum of coarse fish, from breeding through to delivery to our customers. At each point quality control is paramount. We breed using specially selected brood fish from our own ponds, and because we operate on such a large scale our choice of brood fish will always be of the highest quality. The tiny fry from our hatchery go through a process of natural selection in their own ponds, to ensure that only the healthiest fish survive to be transferred to other ponds for growth. With 60 ponds available for growing stock, we give each species its own pond, and grade the stock in each pond by age. Oxygen levels in ponds are maintained by paddle-wheel aerators so that fish are never under stress. We use only the highest quality feed delivered through electronically controlled automatic feeders to maximise nutrition and growth as well as efficiency of feeding. Regular health checks on fish are a further guarantee of quality. We use an independent biologist to check every batch of our fish and report on their condition. The reports are freely available to customers and prospective purchasers. We can supply most types of coarse fish but the majority of our orders are made up of F1 Carp. We started developing this strain ten years ago to produce a hard winter and summer feeding fish that is resistant to diseases such as the Koi Herpes Virus. This has proved to be our biggest seller with over 150 tonnes being sold each year. |
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We aim to match the quality of our product with the highest levels of customer service. Most of our business consists of repeat orders from customers whom we have dealt with over a number of years. Orders are tailored exactly to customers’ requirements in terms of age and size and are typically from 1,000 to 20,000 fish. We will only take orders for fish where we can guarantee delivery within a stated time. As a rule we cannot supply orders for less than £1,000 unless the customer is close to the site of a larger delivery. After taking an order, we handle the Section 30 Licence from the Environment Agency. Fish are transported in modern purpose-built tanks, which offer the best possible environment and a certainty that they will arrive with the customer in a stress-free state. All fish are checked for parasites before dispatch. Following the issue of the Section 30 Licence, deliveries usually take seven days and are arranged at a time and place convenient to the customer. Where possible, we prefer to deliver early in the morning as stock fish travel best overnight. Due to the nature of the business and our customers’ requirements for disease and parasite free stock, we no longer net any fish from the wild or offer a netting or electro-fishing service which involves bringing any fish back to our registered farm site in Marden. For ten years we have been running this site as bio-secure and we feel that introducing fish from unknown waters would compromise this. Please follow the link from the home page for more information on our bio-security measures and for the farm bio-security policy. |
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After receiving feedback from our customers, we have started to grow on F1 Carp for three summers, in order to offer a larger size range of 1 lb +. We were informed that although the F1’s are a great fish, customers would like the opportunity to purchase them a little larger to avoid predation. We have approximately 20 tons this year of larger F1’s and are planning to increase the production weight to 30 tons next year. |