Abstract

The use of fishmeal and fish oil as ingredients in fish feed increases production costs and has long-term environmental impacts. This study aims to investigate alternative protein sources to fishmeal in fish feed to reduce production costs. To achieve this, maggot meal and poultry intestine meal were incorporated into feed and administered to African catfish juveniles to evaluate their growth, production costs, and assess their welfare. Nine iso-protein (42.5% protein) and iso-lipid (11.7% lipids) diets were formulated using these byproducts. The control diet (D1) contained fishmeal as the sole major protein source; in diets D2 to D5, fishmeal was replaced with maggot meal at rates of 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100%. From D6 to D9, the same substitution was made using poultry intestine meal. Fingerlings with an initial average weight of 13.73±0.23 g were placed in 27 hapas arranged in triplicate within a pond and fed for 14 days. Data analysis revealed that the diets based on poultry intestine meal were significantly better in terms of growth (30.25±3.55 g vs. 21.96±1.37 g and 23.7±0.26 g) and cost (1357.85 vs. 2272.8 and 4812.1 CFA francs/kg of fish produced) compared to the other diets. This study demonstrates that fishmeal can be completely replaced by poultry intestine meal in African catfish feed. It also shows that it is possible to develop a fish feed manufacturing industry in Burkina Faso, and that to achieve this, it would be important to better utilize our slaughterhouses by establishing processing units within them to transform byproducts into meal for animal production.

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