Farm-made feeds: preparation, management, problems, and recommendations

Abstract

Making feeds exclusively for certain farming activities is quite common in the tropics particularly in the farming of fishes that feed low in the food chain. Feed preparation will depend on several factors such as availability of feed ingredients, capital, labor, type of feed, size of farm, etc. Management procedures will also depend on factors such as frequency of feeding, capital, labor force, farming system, and availability of electricity in the area. Some problems in the use of farm-made feeds are the limited knowledge of pond dynamics, interaction between supplementary feeds and natural food organisms, quantification of the contribution of natural food to the nutrition of the fish, and quality of feed ingredients. Farm-made feed formulations, processing, and feeding management as well as future research and training approaches with reference to the needs of small-scale fish farmers as recommended by FAO are discussed.