Originally Posted by anthropic
John, did the SMB learn to feed pretty quickly, or did it take longer than the BG?
I raised these SMB from fingerlings and started feeding them starter feed from the time I brought them home and put them in my forage pond. They were on feed at the hatchery (Keo in Arkansas) and I continued with some Optimal starter. Then I went to Optimal BG Jr as they got bigger. So they were accustomed to being hand fed from the beginning.

Story of my raising HSB starting about 2/3 the way down this page and several pages after. Gives the feeds I used as well as a link to NEDOC's thread on raising HSB. It was his experience raising HSB and my visit to his pond that got me excited about raising some HSB myself.

my forage pond thread with the HSB raising experience starting down this page