fish meal

[raingarden]

Do you reckon the fish meal they sell as an organic fertilizer is the same as the fish meal used in compounding feed?

 

[DobieLover]

No.

Purchase fishmeal from a grain mill. Then you know it's food grade.

 

[raingarden]

OK. Thank you very much. I'll ask around but doubt it can be found locally unless the feed store can order it. I don't want a 50 lb sack though.

 

[raingarden]

After reading more we find there are three grades of fish meal, LT, NSM and Standard.

The highest grade is LT. LT means it was processed at low temperature. This is a more involved process that preserves more of the nutritional value. LT is what they use in the high-end trout and salmon feeds. Here, that feed sells for almost $2/lb in 40 pound bags.

NSM stands for NorSea Mink. It is a propriatory process using the freshest possible fish and post-production preservation.

All other fish meal is Standard Grade. The menhadden fish meal from the Gulf and Southeast Coast is Standard Grade.

All three categories are "food grade" in that they are used to make animal feed. There is a very small amount of human food grade fish meal produced for specialty products like fish oil supplements.

Fish oil is also a source of fat in animal feeds and fish meal processing usually includes oil extraction. But, withput proper storage the oils will go rancid,

Currently, about 56% of the world's fish meal production is used to feed farmed fish, about 20% is used to feed pigs, 12% used to feed poultry and 12% is for all other uses including organic fertilizer.

I bought five pounds of fish meal on ebay. It looks, pours and smells just like the fish meal sold in feed stores in some southeastern states for use as shrimp bait.

As it turns out, smell is useful for judging fish meal quality.. Poor quality fish meal starts with poor quality fish and has high levels of volatile nitrogen. Volatile means the nitrogen compounds are being released as a vapor. The nitrogen compounds are being produced by the degradation of protein. Old dead fish smell like old dead fish because of the volatile nitrogen being released as they begin to decay. When the protein drgradation is severe, you smell ammonia instead of old dead fish. Ammonia is made of nitrogen and hydrogen.

Anyway, I was interested in dusting formulated feed with fish meal to enhance palatability. We have accidentally trained our birds to be finicky about their food. They were offered some straight fish meal and seemed to like it. They were then offered a choice of their regular Purina layer crumble, layer crumble dusted with fish meal, and layer crumble dusted with Anthony's Nutritional Yeast.

It was pretty much a bust and waste of time. When the birds started to get bored with eating and I was bored with watching they had eaten about the same amount of each choice.

I also gave fish meal to three-day-old chicks. All I can say is they ate it and haven't died yet.