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Chapter 4Backyard Hatcheries and Small Scale Shrimpand Prawn Farming in ThailandHassanai Kongkeo and F. Brian DavyAbstract Thailand has continued to retain the global dominance in shrimp productionfor over a decade in spite of many adversaries, providing a source of major income,foreign exchange generation, and livelihood opportunities. The Thai shrimp farmingsector essentially consists of small scale owner-managed and operated practices,with an average farm size of 1.6 ha. The farming systems have been resilientand adaptive, which has been a key to their sustainability. One of the keys to continuedsuccess has been the emergence of backyard hatcheries that provide reliablequality seed stock to the industry. The government support to these hatcheries inthe early stages, together with the effective dissemination of culture technologiesthrough the initiatives of the farmers themselves at all stages of the cycle, hasfacilitated and enabled the farmers to be on a firm footing and encouraged them toembrace changes, and make it sustainable. All these factors together have made theThai shrimp farming sector a success, while the sector in many of the neighboringcountries became almost complete disreputable .4.1 Historical Development of Backyard HatcheriesBackyard hatcheries refer to small scale usually family-owned and operated seedproduction operations that were most often located in the backyard of the owners;hence, the choice of this name (see Plate 4.1 ).This close proximity to the family home was critical as it provided family labor,and almost round the clock vigilance, which were the key reasons for success. Thedevelopment of these hatcheries was closely tied to the overall development ofmarine shrimp and the giant freshwater prawn, Macrobrachium, as well as othercultured marine finfish species, a point that will be dealt with later in this casestudy.H. Kongkeo() and F.B. DavyNetwests of Aquaculture Centres in Asia-Pacific , PO Box 1040 , Kasetsart Post Office ,Bargkok 10903 , Thailande-mail: Hassanai.kongkeo@enaca.orgS.S. De Silva and F.B. Davy (eds.), Success Stories in Asian Aquaculture,© Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 201067