The first three crocodile farms in the Northern Territory, Australia were opened in 1980. These were Janamba, Noonamah and Letaba, which is a privately run farm near Litchfield about two hours out of Darwin.
After an artificial incubation period which last up to 80 days, crocodiles are kept in huge sheds where they undergo a series of 'grading' processes in accordance to size and weight. The floor of the sheds is comprised of smooth concrete, so as not to scratch the belly surface (or skin) of the crocodile. Crocodiles in the channel pens where they will spend their last year - 1 metre or 15-18 kg.
There are 10,000 crocodiles on the Janamba Crocodile Farm at Humpty Doo. The layout includes one incubation block, 20 channel pens, 37 paired breeding pens and 5 acres with 5 lagoons containing a couple of hundred crocodiles. This is the gateway to Janamba Crocodile Farm.
The manager throws a captive crocodile a dead battery hen. This crocodile is kept in a small breeding pen for the term of its natural life. The crocodiles at Janamba comprise of 50% from wild 50% from captivity.
Local birds on the roof of the channel pens attracted by the smell of decaying flesh.
A large 'saltie' or salt water crocodile behind bars and wire netting in a breeding pen. The crocodile has its mouth full of dead battery hen, obtained from one of the four battery hen farms that operate in and around Darwin.
The feeding of the crocodiles in the channel pens at Janamba includes; 75% red meat, kangaroo or horse meat and 25% chicken heads. Chicken heads have a lot of bone and aren't as oily as meat. They also may receive a pellet type ration.
The manager of Janamba and the channel pens. He said, 'Once you've got 'em programmed and near set to a pattern they're happy.' He had been previously a pig farmer, he mentioned that intensive crocodile farming was the same as intensive pig farming - just a different animal.
Dead hens in a trailer. Although the farm is not generally open to the public these hens are fed to the crocodiles in the breeding pens as part of a tourist attraction for friends and relatives of the employees.
A large section of Janamba Crocodile Farm consists of many rows of small breeding pens like these. A trailer load of dead hens are thrown to the crocs three times a week from a moving vehicle.
One can only imagine the poor condemned crocodiles splashing around inside the sheds and fighting for their lives during the slaughtering process which is done inside the pens with a shot gun.
The nursery and grading pens for juvenile crocodiles. The initial grading of crocodiles occurs out of these pens, after which they are placed in the larger growing sheds or channel pens.
A crocodile waits to be fed in a breeding pen at Janamba Crocodile Farm.
Crocodile farms in Australia were started by 'ranching' crocodiles, that is, harvesting eggs out of the wild. The manager told me that when they initially got crocodile eggs there was no discrimination. The motto was 'take everything, take whatever you can, except for the eggs too difficult to get being not efficient, as in too dangerous a position. All land owners where eggs are now collected are paid a royalty to access those eggs. The percentages are 50% from the wild and 50% from the farm. It is considered sustained wildlife utilisation.
There are two parallel ponds in each of the channel pens. Since feeding is occurring in an unnatural environment, there is nowhere for the pollutants such as food leftovers to go. The crocodiles tend to drag the food into the pond and contaminate the water, so the shed has been designed with two ponds, so that crocodiles can go into the second pond whilst the first pond is cleaned out.
The channel pens, finishing pens or growing out pens are the end of the line for the unfortunate crocodiles held captive at Janamba. There are approximately 10,000 crocodiles on Janamba farm. With a density of 200 crocodiles as opposed to 10 crocodiles per kilometre, it is bound to create pressures that they didn't have to put up with in the wild.
Every year the Northern Territory Conservation Commission supplies the crocodile farm with crocodiles from the Darwin harbour in a constant clearing out process, that is meant to keep 'people places' basically crocodile free. All these captured wild crocodiles face years of unnatural confinement and eventually death at the farm. Spectators ride in the ute with beer and video cameras at feeding time.
Salt water crocodiles are considered better than fresh water crocodiles because they have pretty skin, no bones, and are a lot softer. Sometimes more scales are required which is usually dictated by fashion. The manager told me that Australia has a relatively small role to play in this luxury industry. Countries like Papua New Guinea produces more than 10,000 skins a year.
End view of a channel pen constructed from canvas, corrugated iron, steel piping and irrigated with borewater at Janamba Crocodile Farm, Humpty Doo, Northern Territory, Australia.
A unique feature of the Janamba Crocodile farm is a huge lagoon containing a few hundred crocodiles. It was popular with the tourists at feeding time. Dead hens were thrown to the hungry crocodiles who thrashed around in the water attacking one another in the rush to get food. Only a few hens were thrown in for the disturbing spectacle.
The manager throws a captive crocodile a dead battery hen.
The manager inspects the juvienile grading pens at Janamba Crocodile Farm, Humpty Doo in the Northern Territory. Note the open rood design of the shed which is better suited to a tropical climate. The smooth concrete floor preserves the belly skin of the crocodiles so that they make better belts and hat bands.
The huge lagoon containing a few hundred crocodiles that attacked each other in a mad rush to get to the dead hens that were thrown to them, as part of an afternoon's entertainment for tourists, friends and family of the employees at the farm.
Interior view of the juvenile growing out and grading sheds. In order to stop mutilation occuring in an unnatural and overcrowded situation, the young crocs have to be constantly 'graded' in order to maintain weight and size uniformity on their way to slaughter.
Most of the time is spent 'grading' the crocodiles, that is, removing the fast growers, so that size in any particular 'growing shed' remains constant. The crocodiles need to be of similar sizes and strengths. Otherwise the larger crocs will pick on, fight, eat and dominate the smaller ones. This would be primarily caused by boredom and the stress of overcrowding, just as it is on all other intensive animal farms. Although mammals and reptiles are very different animals, there are similarities in their responses to stress suffered whilst in captivity.The time for 'culling' or killing is when the crocodiles reach 1.7 metres in length or are 15 kgs in weight - or are the size of a belt.
Incubation takes place in the juvenile growing pens for 80 days at 32 degrees celcius. The juvenile crocodiles remain in the growing pens for 8-12 months - growing to a size of 60-70cm - 1 ½ kg. They are then moved outside into the channel pens.
The staff at Janamba like to minimising the moving of crocodiles when bigger. This the crocodiles live most of their lives and are slaughtered inside the channel pens. The farm employees kill 3,000 crocodiles a year or 80 crocodiles a week.
The crocodiles are shot in the afternoon. They are scrubbed up and disinfected. They are then taken into a chiller room and hung overnight. The staff skin them, bone the meat out, clean skin and salt them and put in chiller. After they make a batch 200 or so dead crocodiles, they prepare to export them.
A hungry crocodile in a breeding pen gets tangled in fence wire in its rush to get the food. Crocodiles who are equip to snatch and grab food in the wild, were crashing into fences and logs in the tiny enclosures at Janamba Crocodile Farm during feeding time.
Crocodiles are regularly taken from the wild and placed in breeding pens at the farm. Eggs are then collected from the pen. Egg laying is from early December through to the end of March. A female crocodile lays an average of 45 eggs, just once a year.
In a similar way to pigs being tail and ear docked and hens being debeaked, crocodiles are also cut. They are identified by the cutting of their scutes when young. The scutes are the pieces of fine flesh that form a ridge down the length of the crocodiles back ending at the tip of the tail. I was told that there was less blood in that area. The mutilation of crocodile scutes is very evident and is done so that crocodile can be identified from a distance and amongst others. It's all about what scute is removed and where it is removed from along the length of the crocodile. The identification relies on counting the scutes. [Left] Staff feeding a crocodile a dead battery hen in the breeding pen at Janamba.
The haunting sight of stagnant water in a breeding pen at Janamba Crocodile Farm at Humpty Doo in the Northern Territory, is a far cry from the salt water crocodile's natural environments of rivers, estuaries and open ocean. Capture and transfer from a natural wilderness area to a farm such as this, is a one way ticket. The unfortunate crocodiles who end up at this farm will die here as well.
Crocodiles in the channel pens where they live out there entire lives on concrete, amongst clumps of horse meat, two shallow trenches of borewater and hundreds of other crocodiles until slaughter. The manager told me that once slaughtered and at the end of the bleed, the crocodile corpses are hung in a trailer, which is better for hygiene and makes a good quality meat for export.
The breeding pens at Janamba weren't much bigger than a single room and contained a dirty pond in the middle, a bit of grass and concrete around the outside. A lot of the pens had minimal shade and there was nowhere for the large animal to hide. Many of the crocodiles had been in these tiny spaces for years.
The Australian saltwater crocodile is Australia's largest natural predator and is now a protected animal in the wild, but more than ever this unique wildlife needs protection from an unscruptulous luxury industry, where a precious individual life is worth less than a belt, a back-scratcher or a keyring.
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