Farmer launches local fish feed to increase profit

Peter Ododa, passionate about fish and poultry farming, uses his talent to locally manufacture fish feeds, using what he calls “local materials.”Ododa has now decided to commercialise his locally made feeds.The New Life Farm Agriculture Nigeria Limited, as his farm is known, has recently launched floating fish feed, produced mainly from local materials, into the […]

Peter Ododa, passionate about fish and poultry farming, uses his talent to locally manufacture fish feeds, using what he calls “local materials.”
Ododa has now decided to commercialise his locally made feeds.
The New Life Farm Agriculture Nigeria Limited, as his farm is known, has recently launched floating fish feed, produced mainly from local materials, into the Nigerian market.
In a chat with Daily Trust in his farm in New Karu, at the outskirt of Abuja, Evangelist Peter Ododa said the feeds called New Life Fish Feeds was introduced this month and is a cost effective feeds that will help farmers in the FCT to maximise their profit, lamenting that many farmers are out business because of the cost of foreign feeds in the market.
The feeds he produces are for grower fish, which ranges from 4mm to 10mm, saying: “The feed is made from cassava extract, groundnut cake, maize orphan, chicken dung, fish meal, rice bran, bread chaff and palm kernel oil, among others.”
He said they are planning to hold a promo and training programme in October, this year, advising fish farmers to always feed their fish in the night, especially from 11pm to 1.00am because fish like to feed in the late hours of the night.
 He advised fish farmers to separate the fishes according to their sizes because of cannibalism and proper feeding, saying that is essential to their growth.
He said he was inspired into making local feeds as a result of the difficulty he encountered while using foreign feeds to feed fishes in his farm.
“When I started fish farming, I was finding it difficult with their feeds. Whenever I buy foreign feeds, I discovered that I was losing instead of gaining. So I started buying corn and groundnut but still found that the cost of feeding the fishes was still high. So I carried out some investigations to ascertain if rejected bread, rice bran, crayfish, corn and cake, among others can feed the fishes.
“I further discovered that extracts from guinea corn, chicken dung when assembled with other things all have nutritious value for the fishes, help you have very good feeds which you can feed your fishes with cheaply and also sell to other people.”
Ododa appealed to the federal government to empower farmers with loans to help them expand their farms as a means of creating employment.
The fish farmer said Nigeria has resources that are being wasted instead of getting harnessed. He said rice bran, for instance, which can generate employment for the youth used to be burnt in places where rice is cultivated.