JPD thanks for your reply. Your spreadsheet looks great. It is hard to imagine that a 5 lbs LMB needs that many pounds of forage just to maintain its size! ...
Perfectly fine to question this. I question it from time to time. But there is research supporting the need of 5lbs - 7lbs wet forage per lb of broodfish. This is a hatchery setting ... might be over or less than what fish in a pond need.
With regard to estimating forage production, it may be overestimated, but because culling requirements are calculated from the same assumptions, it won't affect a cull estimate by much by changing numbers. For example, with maintenance of 3#Forage/#LMB and growth of 6#Forage/#LMB_Gained. I get the same estimate for cull.
A couple of ways to look at maintenance. If an LMB needs to consume an average of 1.36% of its body weight daily for maintenance then it needs 5 lbs Forage/lbs/year. The dry weight of 5 lbs of forage is only around 1.25 lbs. I think this broadly referenced maintenance is a reasonable estimate though I also think it probably fits a normal distribution where it can also be said ... it depends and this is a ball park mean requirement.
