Milking caviar crop for all its worth

Milking time takes on a very different meaning at one farm in the Yarra Valley each autumn.

Thousands of salmon are hand-milked for their roe at Yarra Valley Salmon, the only salmon caviar farm in Australia to do the job by hand.

"Other farms kill the fish to extract the roe, then sell the flesh," milking manager Adam Morrow said.

"We'd rather hand-milk them then they can go back in the ponds to start producing for next autumn.

"Our process isn't something you see every day. It's surprisingly simple but very effective."

Milking season on the farm by the Rubicon River lasts only about four weeks but produces almost 10 tonnes of fish eggs.

The fish are netted in their ponds and dunked in a 400-litre tank of water that has been spiked with clove oil.

The oil mildly anaesthetises the salmon, allowing the milking team to stroke out their eggs and return the fish to recovery tanks.

A mature female salmon produces about 20 per cent of her body weight in eggs each year for three or four years.

Then they get too big to handle easily and it's off to the fish market.

Despite being elbow deep in fish eggs for a month or more each year, Mr Morrow says sitting down to a feed of Aussie caviar is hard to beat.

"I love it. With a bit of cream cheese on a biscuit and some avocado, it's pretty nice."