Barramundi loves good chicken waste

Barramundi loves good chicken waste.

The supply of reliable raw materials to fuel the expansion of the aquafeed industry is a major challenge to ensure the provision of sustainable seafood to a growing population with insatiable demand for quality protein.
The feasibility for alternative protein sources to replace fishmeal in fish and prawns has been a major research topic for several decades. Currently, three main categories of fishmeal and fish oil replacements are available and used at commercial scales: terrestrial plant meals, rendered animal by-products, and seafood processing wastes.
Rendered animal products such as poultry by-product meal can have variable nutritive value due to poor digestibility and variable profile. In our latest study published in Aquaculture, two experiments were conducted to better characterise the nutritional value of a high quality poultry meal in barramundi and the potential for phosphorus supplementation to improve the retention of these meals.
We demonstrated that barramundi can exhibit much improved growth on high quality poultry meal, but only when the feed are supplemented with the right amount of phosphorus, which is twice higher to previously known.
For more details on this study, please read our full publication here.

CSIRO Aquaculture contact

Dr Cedric Simon – Research Group Leader, Nutrition