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I have all the resources to do fish farming and I am highly interested, but marketing and them when they reach maturity is my fear. How do I solve this? I am happy that you are interested and you have the necessary resource then marketing is not a problem at all.
As a beginner, all you need do is to start small, associate with those who have been in the business before and always carry your consultant along.
All these will link you up with available marketing your fish most especially if they carried along from the beginning.
It has been observed that selling catfishes before due time always result in a loss especially when the fishes sold are under three month old. Many fish farmers are the architect of their own failure. They plan to fail even at the onset of their business.
Those essential aspects of their business that should be monitored are left at the mercy of chances. As far as I am concerned, planning is everything in catfish farming.
You might need to plan the number of times to stock and harvest in a year, number of fishes to stock based on your financial capacity, type of feed to use and many more critical areas of fish farming. Here are seven major factors that can cause you to sell before an appointed time:
Other factors that could make you sell untimely include flood, expiration of rent, overstocking, etc.
Read Also: Factors to Consider when Selcting your Fish Farming Site
The fish farmer can market his stock via word of mouth and advertisement. The farmer can use the various advertisement platforms like television, radio, or news papers.
They can also use printed media like handbills, posters, billboards and leaflets. The major thing is for potential buyers to know the table fish is available for sale.
The fish farmer can sell his fish either processed or live or both. The method depends on the market and farmers capacity. The fish farmer can process the smaller fish in his stock into smoked fish and sell to market women or individuals.
Another way is to make the fish into barbecue, steamed fish or boiled fish pepper soup. For this method you need to have an outlet such as a bar or restaurant. You can sell your live fish either in bulk or singly to individual buyers.
The major way catfish farmers sell their stock is in bulk to market women. There are market women who specialize in catfish farming and buy the fish in bulk.
In turn they sell retail to individuals at high sums making large profit. The market women make huge profit more than the fish farmer who earns based on size and quantity sold.
To make appreciable earnings the fish farmer should sell his stock at current market price per kilogram. The price per kilogram in 2015 in Lagos Nigeria is 500 Naira so knowig the current price gives you an edge over the hard bargaining fish sellers.
Selling retail will guarantee huge earnings because you are in full control of your sales. You can sell to individuals either by size or weight depending on your preference.
It might take time selling retail but you end up smiling all the way to the bank. If you decide on this method you can find your customers in various ways.
Use handbills and posters including banners to let your neighbors know you have fish for sale. Word of mouth is also very important, local paper publications and small bill boards.
Employing a fish seller is a smart way to offer your sales to potential customers. You get top price for your fish and make good earnings. The drawback to this method is capital loss form deceitful vendors who might cheat their employers.
Read Also: How to Control Cannibalism among Fishes
If you are not averse to selling your own stock in the open market then you’ll make massive profit. Selling your stock yourself takes care of all aspects from production to sales.
Restaurants and bars sell catfish to their customers as pepper soup or barbecued. They source the fish from fish farmers and middlemen and are able to pay reasonably for the fish.
A fish farmer can build relationship with such outlets to supply them the fish. The farmer can own a barbecue or pepper soup outlet in such establishments.
Some restaurants and bars allow food vendors pay monthly sums for a space in their establishment.. The catfish farmer can leverage on this ready market to sell his fish.
You can process you catfish, package and sell the fish via export it to buyers. Before you export your fish you need to have a buyer, and package them according to strict export requirement.
You need to prevent contaminants getting into your fish, get export license and follow government regulations. Exportation is tough but highly rewarding if you succeed.
Breeders of catfish have a different market than growers. The breeders only have one market which is selling to small and large scale fish farmers.
They get customers by word of mouth, advertisement in newspapers and posters. They can also deposit handbills to catfish feed sellers for farmers who buy their feed concentrate.
As a result of poor financial planning and other factors which might include flooding, theft, poor growth, disease outbreak and so on, many farmers might decide to sell their grow-out fishes before they reach maturity. Among the factors mentioned earlier, poor financial planning often makes the farmer to sell before their stock matures.
They believe that if they will not be able to feed their catfishes, the best option is to sell them off so that they will not lose the initial weight gained. Each farmer should have in mind, right from the beginning of raising their fishes, the time he or she wants to dispose his or her produce. The determination of each farmer should be guided by these two factors:
The “market” mentioned here may not be understood by non-fish farmers or sellers. However, in simple language, fish markets are in different categories. Each category is defined by the size of fishes expected in such market. There are four major fish markets across Nigerian environment, they are:
From experience, it has been observed that bigger is always better for catfish markets. At this point, I would like to suggest that a farmer should allow his fishes to reach mature age of at least five months. This will enable him to benefit in the following ways:
Source: Market Survey February 2016.
For any farmer to benefit from catfish maturity, he or she must wait. However, some catfish species mature earlier, say 4 months, while others mature late (5 months and above).
For catfishes that mature in 4 months, there is no point keeping them for more than 4 months because keeping them beyond this age will amount to waste of money.
Here are more amazing fish farming books to guide and assist you further:
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