Celebrating One Hundred Years
STOUTLAND, MO. – In 1926 F. Lawrence “Bally” Bailliere began a little venture in association with Dr. Charles “Doc” Furrow, known for establishing the initial trout hatchery at Bennett Spring before the state purchased the property for Missouri’s first state park in 1924-25. The two began a new business, raising trout on 97 acres outside Stoutland, Mo. Bally was originally from Tulsa where Doc was a dentist. Although Doc’s fish culture experience was raising trout for restaurants in St. Louis and Kansas City, in their research the two encountered a new market. The growing popularity of goldfish that included five and dime store markets, was closer and more accessible than the market for trout and that had them looking in a new direction.
On a speaking tour of the eastern US, Doc Farrow also discovered with the establishment of pet departments in chain dime stores, like F.W. Woolworth’s, S.S. Kresge’s, and Ben Franklin Five & Dime, the combined production of goldfish, concentrated in certain counties in Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania could only meet the demand from September through February. And this was for common goldfish only. Fancy types like black moors and fantail varieties were often shipped in from Asia, making them even more expensive.
In 1928, Bally and Doc hired Roy Nakashima, a graduate of the Imperial School of Fisheries of Tokyo Japan, the nation that had long been the leader in goldfish and koi production. With over 10 years of experience in the field, he was hired to convert their trout raceways to goldfish ponds. Fancy goldfish brood stock was imported from Japan while common goldfish stock was purchased from Grassyfork Fisheries in Indiana. Their first shipments of goldfish were made later that year, with a total of $55.50 of goldfish sales for the entire year. Initially, goldfish were shipped by rail, in specially designed cans which featured an ice compartment above, allowing the melting ice to cool and add oxygen to the water with fish, down below. The cans were then returned to Ozark Fisheries to be used again, not unlike returnable soda bottles of the time.
Established in rural Camden County, Bally and Doc’s dream has grown and evolved into a major agriculture operation today that includes 30 employees. Bally bought out Doc Furrow’s portion of the business in 1938. And Roy Nakashima worked there for 51 years until his death at age 88. It is doubtful the new goldfish venture would have survived without his skills and hard work.
Today, the Ozark fish farm is operated by the third and fourth generation, Margaret Cleveland, Senior Vice President and Bally’s great-granddaughter along with her father, Larry Cleveland, President of Ozark Fisheries. Margaret’s brother, Joseph, also a Senior Vice President runs Grassyfork Fisheries in Martinsville, Indiana, purchased by Ozark Fisheries in 1970. Once Ozark Fisheries’ greatest competitor, Grassyfork was the oldest private goldfish farm in the United States at that time, started in 1899.
Both Margaret and Joseph were raised on the fish farm in Camden County and attended Stoutland schools. Margaret earned a degree in Fisheries and Wildlife from the University of Missouri-Columbia. She took what is often referred to as a ‘gap year’ immigrating to Korea as a Fulbright scholar where she taught English for a couple of years before she returned to Missouri and the family business in 2018. Joseph took over the Indiana operation in 2012.
Today, the two locations produce five different types of goldfish, including straight-tail and fantail goldfish, common orange goldfish, red and white, Sarasa-goldfish, blue shubunkin, fantail and both standard and butterfly koi.
The fan tails and common goldfish are popular aquarium pets and all come in a variety of colors. Common goldfish are used in aquariums, ponds and as feeder fish for other species. The fancier types like fantails are aquarium stars and koi are seen in many ponds and decorative water gardens. Koi come in two varieties, butterfly fins or long fins and standard or shorter fins and are a colored form of carp. They sell across the country to both wholesale and major retail operations.
Ozark Fisheries has over 600 one acre ponds between the two locations in Missouri and Indiana. The Missouri farm is fed by six artesian springs. “They put out a million gallons of water daily, keeping our water levels up even during times of drought,” Margaret explained. “Bally was concerned about our watershed and as a result, bought as much surrounding farmland as often as he could, thinking that it would be important to maintaining the springs and protecting the ponds’ watershed. It turns out science proved later on that our watershed comes more from the southern area, for instance, even toward Bennett Spring. He found all that land, however, was most conducive to raising cattle and so the other part of our operation here is the Circle F Cattle Company.”
Like all livestock operations, a fish farm comes with different sorts of challenges such as specific predators. In the case of their fish farming operation, the predators are a protected species themselves and consist of four pairs of resident eagles.
“A single bird can consume two pounds of goldfish a day,” Margaret shared “so they can be a real headache to us. Since they are a protected species we really cannot do anything to fight against them. It means we have to raise enough goldfish to feed them and still have some to sell. On the other hand, as eagles they keep away other predators like osprey and even other eagles as they tend to be very territorial.”
Ozark Fisheries is about to celebrate their 100th anniversary in late July and just as they have seen their acreage grow, their fishery operations and particularly their fish shipping methods and their marketing approaches have changed dramatically to keep up with business in the 21st century.
They now use sinking feed pellets rather than floating feed, making their fish less susceptible to bird predation. They use more modern methods to spawn their fish populations. They have changed from shipping live fish in metal cans via the railroad to shipping in a cardboard box with insulation via Fed Ex, UPS, and airfreight. The changes and more modern methods have resulted in a much lower loss of fish in their shipping operations. They raise over 100 million goldfish annually. Margaret pointed out that not all of them make it to a sellable size so they have to raise enough to have enough to sell each year.
Ozark Fisheries has survived and grown into a remarkably successful operation that would make Bally and Doc proud. Depending on how one measures, Ozark Fisheries is one of the oldest and largest family-owned goldfish and koi farms in the US.
Larry Cleveland, Bally’s grandson and Margaret’s father has completed a beautifully illustrated book this last year, outlining the company’s history and development, in time for the company’s 100th anniversary, entitled Ozark Fisheries: Fourth Generation Fish Farm.
It does an excellent job of depicting the company’s incredible growth, success, challenges, and triumphs over the last century.
