GUTHRIE, Okla. ( KFOR ) — They look pretty big for shrimp, but then again, the creatures Andy and Micah Chapman are raising — are prawns, native to the Eastern Pacific Ocean around Mexico.
Lately, they are growing much more plentiful on a farm in Logan County.
“We just received a batch of 22,000,” Andy tells us.
Andy and his wife Micah had normal jobs until a couple of years ago, when they took the plunge and bought a derelict marijuana grow operation north of Guthrie.
“I write computer software,” says Andy sheepishly.
Micah laughs and adds, “We came home and jumped in.”
They had a lot of ideas, but a local restaurant owner suggested a product he thought would be in constant demand.
“They said, ‘if you’ll sell prawns, we’ll buy them’,” recalls Andy.
The first shipment of baby prawn came in February 2024 — dumped into huge tanks of carefully maintained salt water and oxygenated by special pumps with temperatures maintained between 82 and 86 degrees.