Why He Stopped His Tilapia Farm to Start a Catfish Farm in Ghana #catfish_farm_ponds #tilapia

I'm doing um tilapia and catfish which one would you say um it's profitable if I put it in that sense but someone also manages some tilapia Farms someone also doing catfish I have to put you on the spot among these two just differentiate for me which one do you think is profitable to do they are all profitable if you manage it if you manage it our culture is a profitable business online so if you manage this world it's a profitable business [Music] [Applause] if it is located and here I'm here to visit the farmer for young graduates from the University of um Cape Coast is about 10 years now since completing um UCC yes as a Fisher student she decided to bring her into fish farming that's to listen to his inspiring story of how you started how the journey has been going to face the challenges that come with it and some particular details that you out there I'm being sponsors at your own fish farm and can also learn about things before we get into the video make sure you like comment share and subscribe share this video so this people can learn from this inspiring stories if you're also official students from any of the universities anyone who's interested in starting their own fish farm and get to learn something about this video like and be part of this time we really like you to get to promote this video to other viewers to also get to um watch this video and also learn about some of these inspiring stories and subscribe to the part of the Channel all right so I'm here with my team and we are here at the speech Farm to know how the journey started how it has been um come and catfish here in Ghana so please can you introduce ourselves graduates from UCC when I eventually right from school I ventured into the industry okay from the national service stage okay that's what you can do so as you see I've done this for um wow but you didn't start with this okay started with Tilapia and you know as the system goes towards changes [Music] but not us we are doing the compensation and around the company and we see trade now in itself and under the company I hope others who are interested in the official industry to set up their own patients living in the backyard or wherever at every stage you wanted we are able to help you so far you have happened seven various Farm setups we run from setup to management to harvest to harvest knowledge I love to try and understand um this far and the question is I entered UCC with biological sciences and updated you are given the option to choose various courses so we're taking on a field trip we take on a third trip to it was under the biological science department we have a faculty we have different departments they have different courses programs department so events on a field trip to all the videos you know departments industry that's connected to the various department and I remember we visited awesome water research this place yes research is aquaculture Development Center by run by the government official commission so when you got the it was my first time seeing a very huge fish farm and I was so excited about the points and how they were running things it was then I realized that fish farming is not just a lemon business it's something that one can really Venture into it as a full-time you know business and do well so I decided to major in that program major in the fisheries and then after that I see how I can Venture into it so I did the program and after that I got some funding from him yes you had the same passion and you know we decided to come and he actually did his uh with a national service at the Agriculture [Music] Center the development center so uh he had a lot of experience from there on the field okay and I did my service at fishes commission Tema oh nice she also had a bit of experience over there so the Two of Us coming together we started well but we started the tilapia and as since we're going afternoon but a whole lot of challenges that was beyond our control at the beginning so we had to sit back lay back close the tilapia for some time then know how you can get back into business and we did that and getting back into business we decided to venture into catfish I mean it was military range or they were doing different types of fishes the akosombo uh the Water Research Center is aquaculture Development Center so they developed everything after culture but now the species of fish that they are developing is the catfish and the tilapia but the tilapia is what they started with and they've developed it for you know with the tilapia they've gone far with it yes with everything so if if you want to have a training if you want to go into a fish farm and they want to have a training with a certificate and everything they do it there you can go there no training you give you everything that you need then they even sell fingerlings do stock as well but I don't know for catfish they are commercial hatcheries and other things around they are for the government and so they are not purposely established for commercial purposes it's a research center you know it's about to be do you know commercialize yeah yeah so let's run between a little bit on the challenges like him with the celebration beginners who also want to look at the options you don't know which option to go to going but let me know since you went through that you know some of my channel can you take us through okay the time the time we were starting our fish farm we didn't have the option of to choose between the catfish and the tilapia because the tilapia was already developed and we had experience with the tilapia already before we decided to venture into it and uh one thing is the tilapia each of these fish species the environment that you choose to rear them will determine how you go about it every species because their physiology is different you see the way they behave and everything is different so depending on the officiology it will determine and the environment you are going to culture them in returning their management practice and the things you have to put in place so we were and so far when you want to venture into the tilapia business The Optimist system the most successful system that you can use is the cage system that will float on the volcanic um yes that is the most efficient system that's introduced for the tilapia because the water lake is their natural environment and one another thing is with the leak and The Dugout pump and the tanks and all that tilapia you know the fish when you put them together like that you have both sexes in there that's the male and the female with the tilapia they do inbreeding they do improve ment so when you put them in a Dugout Pond a tank or any holding capacity like that they will do in building and it will make your management very difficult because for example you stock thousand after a month they feel better and they've you know the eggs hatched and you have yes and you have a lot about 10 000 how are you going to feed perhaps you plan to feed the thousand and you know if you have the capacity to take the excess out you see so the best and efficient system was the hair system and you know they both tell it to is zoned you have the Upstream the dam and the downstream okay the Upstream is beyond the akosom Buddha that's where the fresh water comes from the sauce and the after the damn dance the basic in there is a dam like that business yes and if I also move down it's closed and I could say that is closed all the inflows remain in the water so the water quality in that stretch gets back so give it our time some Farmers didn't know this and they were floating here this year they they were putting a lot of investment in there and one day just a day the water goes bad and all your fish are good so as a startup in your face was such a challenge you can't protein okay so it means those who are having their fresh cages in between there I personally one and the opposite one like they were having water quality issues and still some have their cake in there but those people perhaps they've studied their environment and they know how to manage themselves around it but it wasn't a good location so we started here and we had challenges so we later moved to the afternoon and afternoon to pass its own challenges the absolute has its own challenges at the Upstream the water surface area is brought you see so the cages that we floats when you are not able to give it heavy ankles the wind blows them away sometimes their wings even break the cages wow yes the metal galvanized pipe it shakes them like that you know it's welded together yes it shakes them like that then it breaks the kids if I realize your cage is gone your fish is gone nice you see so those are the challenges that we face with the tilapia and the general challenge marketing it's not like you don't have the market for the fishing Ghana you have a consumption like a demand Gap demanded Supply Gap of about 400 000 metric tons the demanded Supply cup of 400 000 metric tons of fish and one wow yes and you can't you can't dwell on importation to to break that down it's only aquaculture so when you have your fish ready the market there's no problem but pricing pricing in a marketing strategy it affects the harmless a lot so if it doesn't go well for you you may not be able to continue you may not be able to control because there's no regulation there's no system you know standards to a farmer may decide to price its own fish depending on how you know how he feels and feels yeah yeah or something yeah a buyer will be bargaining based on that price I get you I get to see you sometimes the farmer someone wants a new you know do they have the choice to sell it either Break Even or get his money and go and save somewhere you see and right now there are other ways you are trying to you know bringing to help with the marketing issue yes you know you know I will processing when you process other products so those who are able to smoke their fish and sell okay let's come back a bit I know you've zoomed into the challenges yeah straight out it's all forever um tilapia farming I have quite a number of videos on that like I visited some famous along the streets from this year I could say and all of that what I do tilapia and all of that so if any of you want to go and learn about that one too I'll link the video in the description section so you can check out those ones out but yeah focusing on Catfish I want to know um how long do you guys transition from the tilapia to the catfish when has the catfish started like when did they start you know catfish has been with us has been with us since aquaculture has been around but the thing is the rate at which people you know are venturing into it now looking at the growth rate for the past five years I think it is is good it's very encouraging people are really venturing into it people are really going to especially they are breaking into the catfish and uh now no all the other aspects like the value chain in the catfish farming you can get everything you can easily get it accessible and available with us all like first it was difficult it was very difficult to get a catfish found in Boots because the Nigerians were doing it a lot so sometimes if someone wants to purchase blue stock to start a small house you have to do as fast Nigeria yeah you know because one essential thing about farming fish farming in general is the seed oh it's been four years four years yes that's after you guys stop the tilapia is it the tilapia personally we closed our farm but I was still working with some tilapia Farms okay yeah doing management and asking for them but personally the setup for the catfish Farms that I started doing for people and I started with them for the past four years yes okay it's been four years now since we started establishing for people okay so um doing um tilapia and catfish which one would you say um is profitable if I put it in that sense or someone also manages some tilapia Farms someone also doing catfish I have to put you on the spots among these two that's differentiate for me which one do you think is profitable to do they are all profitable if you manage it if you manage it our culture is a profitable business online so if you manage this world it's a profitable business yeah even with the tilapia you should mind because the challenges I was talking about they are manageable if you have the capacity to manage them well it's profitable that is very profitable and there's demand for the demand for fish demand for fish but I know some people to complain that oh they have fishes they are not getting people to buy this is people also complain about yes yes I was that was what I was talking about with the pricing if you're not getting people to buy it's probably because of the price they are not ready to receive to take the price you are giving to them at that moment because they will be looking at their course of production you know the things that has gone into it and the price you are coming to here probably they may not be make anything so they will wait for a good price so that's it all comes back to the management so you should know when to sell your fish and you should know what has gone into it then when to sell so that you'll not be losing you understand yes okay okay so we look at the second we look at the management how to go about it somebody told information about the subsequent videos so yeah um if someone wants to status catfish how about the discourse what's the cost uh the capital involved in starting the um catfish if you give an estimate to us fish farming is a very Capital intensive you know Venture okay it's very Capital interest and depending on the system you want to run that the cost will depend on the system you want to want okay yes because this is not the only system that you can use to run a catfish farm you can decide to do the Dugout point and decide to do the concrete tanks and you can decide to do the equipments this one is quite recent no more yeah most people are using here now and most of the time because of Land Management so in terms of the cost you know I don't know I can't generalize it you understand because someone may decide to go into that outbound and the labor that's being care in digging The Dugout point would differ from locations yes it will differ from location it will differ because those work uh definitely workmanship in the city wouldn't be the same as the village yeah definitely yes and so the labor that you use and uh other things other inputs variable inputs will determine yes the course so uh there are some costs that one there is General that's the feed cost and the cost of fingerlings that one there is General okay and that one that one we can talk about that one but so we can do an estimate for let's say a 10 by 10 kapoli tank okay a 10 by 10 tapoli time to run it to finish will cost you twelve thousand dollars ten by ten one ten by ten point the setup and the running it's for one production period okay okay so let's bring the production profile so let's say from finger lens to the energy yes this is a seven months period before you saw is it with feeding and everything everything okay everything so with the feed and how much does the field goal for if you have to let's say for one production period you're talking about how much the human estimate for the feeding okay let's say for a thousand stocking density okay of catfish to get them to maturity it will cost you around seven thousand to eight thousand dollars wow do they feed and everything yeah we fit that's feeding feeding that's for them yes okay that's defeated because of the cost of feed now how much are the bag go for it which feed do you use average a bag would be 250. you don't use one particular field we have we have kujis and hamper then copies yes so dependent you know normally the foreign ones they have high protein contents so we start with them to boost their initial growth rate before we fall on the locals the foreign you the 10 by 10 tarpaulin tank will cost let's say between three thousand four thousand okay okay then with the feeding and everything then the feed let's say 8 000 comes in then fingerlings because of thousand feet and normally we prefer stocking juveniles than the normal things that's one advice almost everything yes but I think they are difficult to take to manage yes yes so yeah I started watching don't don't try with fingerings to give you troubles you can easily lose them so yeah so 12 000 from finger layer from point of where it starts to change and the feed into it is what what's the kg of the 250. the 250 would be 300 to below 250 so I just use the 250 as the average okay you know average yeah cost per bag for feed because there are some you know the as we said the starters they are very expensive so you start some even cost as much as 400 cities or more for 20 kilos yeah and we have some that are 15 kilos that's there right now that's 50 kilos and that one is 240 cities okay that's for the mature sizes yeah that's from 4mm going yeah of course and the others there are two it is something 290 something you know 295 285. so average I use the 250 as the average okay yes so I keep getting so now you always talk about challenges of tilapia now with running a catfish um these are some of the main challenges that you face or you feel the most catification messages when it comes to riding a catfish business right now one major challenges fish farmers in general Ghana is you know education because education goes a long way when you are well educated in the what you are doing it goes a long way to help you solve a lot of issues and you know animal farming one major issue with it is Disease Control this control and every fish farm will tell you the mortalities that happens all of that is because of disease so if you don't know the type of disease that has affected your fish and how to control it you can lose a lot it's so one major challenge is diseases diseases into 30 years and we can talk about the crackhead disease that's where you see yeah how does that one affect them that one you know and first we can talk about the causes of diseases in the in the catfish you know it may be because of pathogens from the environment that you're operating the pathogens may affect the water or it may be from you know the fish their resistance level because you may be giving them you know a feed which doesn't have the right minerals and vitamins to give them that immune to prevent that yeah to give them that new level to prevent them to be resistance to diseases you see so you check the feed quality you are giving then the pathogens from environment also causes and also uh the water how frequent you change your water okay because when they remain in the water for a long time and the water goes bad it can turn to also affect them so fresh farming one major thing you should be doing a lot is monitoring you monitor your physiology so that you know when they are behaving they know that okay let me check if they have been affected by a disease then you know the type of disease which is affected which has affected them and also the treatment that you give to them so that's a major Challenge and the general challenge you know Finance Finance Finance because sometimes even and one other thing inputs is it now there are diseases that the treatment you know it doesn't cost much that's the ones we use bitter Leaf like those things yeah like getting at least more of the most frequent kind of disease that affects them and maybe some suggested Solutions a bit yeah with a crackhead like this that one the same thing is you see the the the scar the head Parts you see that reddish the head parts right the upmost part of the eye you see it turning great like so at the head part or the fish that one and the moment they get infected it will the red will you know it will eat into the scar and once it eats into the scar once it eats into this car it will definitely die so when you see it like that for the crackhead when you see you first of all have to drain all the water out and you stop feeding the fish one thing is when you see your fish being infected with any disease you take water out you stop feeding them for some days a day or two then you do the treatment for them for for them so you see that they are doing it before you can start feeding okay yes because when they are infected with a disease the immune system everything is down you don't pressure that growth yeah so you don't feel and we have done this in catfish too that's where you see they are swollen abdomen yellowish like that that one too is caused by similar issues so don't want to take the water out then you can you can do bitter Leaf treatment for them and with the crackhead too you can do salt bath treatment yes yes and the other chemicals on the market that you can buy to apply for them to treat them yeah that's the for example we have this flux 020 it's very efficient efficient for the treatment of such diseases and better leave to you know this purely organic and it's good to treat self disease as well yeah so those are some of the common ones yeah okay let me clear up and then so um someone is watching that she's interested in maybe from our conversations he wants to start catification whether that one advice you give to the person who want to venture into catfish for me yeah I already let me put them together you see the first thing the person must take into consideration is the location you see we didn't locate our site here by chance see one thing is when you're running at a cooling system like this you need a lot of water you do a lot of water circulation water changing yes and imagine if we're in Accra and you are buying water the cost of water alone will surprise the cost of feeding because you'll be buying water every week so your course of water imagine you buy about 300 series cost of water every week you see it will eventually suppress your cost of feeding and once of water is not something you must you know cost when you are doing your expenses for for for for the farming so locating our farm like here like this you have the water in abandon yeah yeah it's from the dam over here yes Z so one thing is you look at your environment and the things you must factor in looking at the environment is water source of water source of quality water not just any water what are that is free from pathogies iron and those heavy metal poisoning and those stuff meanwhile yeah then also security proximity to human settlement and yeah and also you sighted at the place that all the other inputs you must you you can easily you know assess it yeah imagine you have a farm somewhere and when you're buying feed it must cost you a lot to convey your feed to the space Transportation cost so you consider all of that and also when you want to go into it after you've secured your site and everything you look at um if you want to buy juveniles or finger lens you look at the seed very very you have to take very you pay much attention to it what you're getting when you're getting them you may talk you'll be feeding them they grow for it wouldn't be helping So eventually you lose yes eventually you lose so you check your seed then also your management skill your management skill if you don't have any knowledge at all you have to learn yes because fish farm defeat that we give them weaving calculate there's a few chat that has a fish farmer you must know the ratios and all of that you see with this sampling today so the weight that we have we are going to use it to calculate the feed they'll be eating daily for the next month for them okay so that we can purchase in bulk this so you must learn all those things yes so um if you want to learn more about it in the second video we'll be looking at more details how to start some information that will be useful to you even with the feeding we'll go into details and types of the touch base on all of those things so the last one is there are more you two are watching us who and there's no jobs who are not finding things to do the episode kind of but I don't know what to actually do and what advice would you give to the Youth of today if they are if you are speaking to them what advice would they say you would give to them needed attention I believe it will go a long way to solve this youth unemployment issue we have in the country yes it will work very long way because one small scale farm can employ from one to five staff full-time yeah you see in the medium scale if you have let's say about hundreds of those small and medium skills all over it go a long way to help this this unemployment issue and if you are a youth and you have interest in it and you want to go into it this 12 000 that I mentioned [Music] there are small ways you can go into maybe you have a good water source in the house even if you have pipe normal water type water you can use it but that one there are ways to use you know how you they are ways you go about it using it so if you have it and you want to start something small at your backyard you may not be able to afford the 12 000 capacity with everything so you can go in for this you know they have this white a poly tank this white tank with the metal room around it you can decide to get one and you start with let's say 100 150 catfish then manage it in your own way definitely by the time you sell you'll get something to you know continue and if someone sees what you've done and they have interest in me even decide to help you support you to expand I I'll tell you that if you have the interest or you have the passion for it you may not you know have the chance or capacity to get huge sums of money to start but your small way you can start it in this moment you can start it yeah sure yes and I'll encourage everybody who has the passion to start something like that to go into it you won't regret you will never regret at all and and also the you know the aquaculture industry the whole lot of value chain in it it's not necessarily just the farming okay you see you can decide to also go into the Hatchery system whereby you only hatch the finger lens supply to the farmers and you can also decide to go into the marketing right now we have point and kill uh joins pop around all over so you can decide to you know do procurement for them go to farmers buy from them buy from them at a rate go and sell Supply to this joint restaurant hotels all those people at a rate you're not farming but you'll be getting something people are doing it and they are making it yeah you see yeah so sometimes too you can you know there are people who also buy the fish they smoke them they process them they even you know the fish you can you can get fish for you from Eastgate those who smoke a day they take fish oil from Ace guts so you can go into the angle processing of the fish being at catfish tilapia can decide to smoke it then take it to the market so you can buy from the farmers smoke it yourself package it then you also sell to make money so the whole lot of value chain around it someone can also decide to because right now farmers are struggling we feed him so someone can decide to venture into food production like low cost of food production or maybe give us an alternative you'll Venture into an alternative ways to see that because you know in advance where they have ways that they feel their face not solely depending on fish this fish feed that we buy people grow worms yeah they grow worms from uh they call this dark dark dark horse fly or something there's this Dark Horse those bigger bigger bigger yeah I've seen nothing on most people used to even feed their poetry so they grow worms and yeah there's a name for it yes yeah so someone can decide to land Adventure into that just do that and Supply families farmers will buy true yes myself sometimes we buy reviews the small small one thousand fish the first one we buy from them give to the fish oh okay yes it's very good for them because when they're in the natural water that's why they eat ah yes yes so I supplement it with the normal feed now you buy that's not every day shall we buy because that one is too expensive yeah yeah okay so someone can decide to venture into something like that this is a whole lot of value chain around the aquaculture not just the farming alone yeah okay so as he said yes there's a lot of value chain around it um necessarily own your farm like this or have the 12 000 cities to start something like this but at least you can enter into your Evolution process and yeah you can make some few returns from it other than sitting at home not knowing what to do okay so we'll end this video here in the next video we're going to look at how one can start information when it comes to feeding Water Management the pond everything basically about cattle farm and that would be useful to you for you to learn about it so if you want to learn more about it make sure you catch me in the next video where we look uh take care or go into details when it comes to that all right very end the video make sure you like comment share and subscribe let me know your comment let me know your thoughts what's your experience to has been um whatever it is you want to share with us let's just know your comments in the comment section like this video And subscribe and I'll see you all in the next one peace out

Channel: The Chartered Farmer

Views: 54,239

Keywords:

Id: _PkQ_UoT0dM

Length: 37min 46sec (2266 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 09 2023