Development and Testing of Demand Feeder for Carp Feeding in Outdoor Culture Systems

The demand fish feeder, which was made-up of Fibre Reinforced Plastic (FRP) material was designed with an angle of repose 50 and tested in outdoor conditions. It was fabricated with general-purpose tools at a cost of Rs. 3,100 (US $ 69) in 2007. It was maintenance free and easy to operate. It was tested in cisterns of 10m capacity at the CIFA farm, Bhubaneswar for a period of 110 days to evaluate its efficiency against that of hand feeding the fish. Fish fed by the demand feeder gained an average of 12.61% more weight than hand-fed fish. During the experiment, the total of 25.86 and 30.58 kg of pelleted feed were used to produce 7.15 and 6.25 kg of fish in the demand and hand-fed cisterns, respectfully. The hopper can hold 10 kg of feed, which can be fed to 500 kg of fish in a day, if provided @ 2% of their body weight. The total cost saved from feed efficiency and man-hour labour reduction was calculated to be Rs 1012/in this present study. Details of design and fabrication of the feeder are discussed in this paper.