Water quality in salmon hatcheries determines welfare outcomes for the earliest life stages. Maintaining optimal temperature, oxygen, pH, and ammonia levels prevents suffering and sets conditions for good lifetime health.
Hatchery water quality issues cause suffering that can persist as lasting health problems throughout the production cycle. Skeletal deformities, gill damage, and immune suppression originating in poor hatchery water quality manifest as welfare problems months or years later. Investment in water quality management in hatcheries is one of the most cost-effective lifetime welfare interventions available in salmon production.