Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Feeding Making my own fish chow.

This spring I plan on killing off my lower pond. Stunted BG and LMB I plan on turning it into a yellow perch only pond due to the size about 1/8 th of acre . I was thinking of using my meat grinder to turn all of the fish into a food source for my new fish. How would you guys recommend I can make dry food out of his ordeal.

Unfortunately there's a lot to making fish food besides grinding up fish meal. Not saying you can't do it but it involves the addition of binders, vitamins, grains, and cooking at high temps and dehydration. And extruders are also used.

I agree with Cecil. Cat food or dog food may be possible. If you do salt water fishing, maybe chum is a possibility. Garden fertilizer (fish emulsion) would probably be one of their better alternatives. But having sat through sessions by the big feed producers, and seeing the very long trial and error process they go through to develop a new feed, I'm afraid you'd end up with buckets of stinking fish. Storing any quantity of it will also become a problem. Drying it is not a simple process from all I've learned about it.

And, that brings me back to fish emulsion for the garden. Many who have been here on the forum for a long time, or who know me in person, know I have a pretty strong stomach. Making fish emulsion is not for the weak of stomach. But mixed with "browns" like dried leaves, straw, etc., it does make a good long lasting organic fertilizer, but the brewing process takes about a month.

I have multiple large compost piles that I turn with a tractor front end loader. When I clean fish, I usually take the gut bucket and the tractor to one of the newer piles. I bury it very deep into the pile. If I just use a fork to dig a hole and then bury it in the compost, critters, like coons and skunks get into it almost immediately. Ive never tried rototilling it directly into the garden, but that would probably work too.

Good luck. If you rotenone the ponds, read some of the older posts here. I think EWEST probably was the one who wrote quite a bit about it.