Week 3 - Feedstuffs and Formulations

Having located a long term supplier of fingerlings, I've now turned my attention to the most important aspect on the farm, feed. Fish feed is often the most expensive operational cost on a farm, and after working out some simple cash flows, I decided it was too expensive for the farm to purchase commercial feed from Maldeco. The next option is to look towards locally available feedstuffs, and establish an appropriate feed formulation taking in to account any seasonality issues that may arise.

This week I have been scowering the local land, talking to small and large farming operations, in an attempt to source good quality feed ingredients for the farm. I've come across the typical things; rice bran, maize, soybean, cottonseed cake, but I've also seen some interesting alternatives such as Jatropha and Moringa, which have good levels of protein but potential issues with their inclusion levels. Fishmeal is not available locally and has to be imported from South Africa, therefore it is not feasible to put in to the feed.

Using a best buy cost analysis formula, it works out that soybean, maize and rice bran are the best ingredients to use on the farm, they are always available and extremely local, so it reduces transport costs. I can also obtain some fish sweepings from the market. I'm not sure of their quality, but perhaps it will contain some of the EAA's which the others feedstuffs lack.

I think I'll bring some back to the Stirling to test for protein and lipid levels.

Some Simple On - Farm Feed drying in the sun

A commercial mill

Low Fat Soybean Meal