Shrimp Farm Brings New Business To Southside

VIRGINIA - They raise cows, chickens and now seafood? One Southside farmer is doing it in Pittsylvania County. His cash crop is turning a lot of heads.

Cochran - "We get the shrimp when they're very little and then they have to be grown to a certain size before they can go out in the pond."

Eddie Cochran is the first in Pittsylvania County to operate a shrimp farm. He's nursing Malaysian Giant Prongs...growing some eight-thousand of them in this pond.

These shrimp start out as small as your fingernail. But they eventually will fill your plate.

Cochran - "They do get very big by the end of the growth season you should have a shrimp from head to pincher about that long."

Cochran is also the first in Virginia permitted to raise African tropical fish, Talapia. These fish help keep the water clean by eating the algae.

Source: ABC 13