₦airaland Forum

maternal:
Your destiny is not the next man's. Your post is filled with ignorance and bias. To begin with Shinarambo lives in the coldest part of Canada. I have never experienced -46. Winter in a city like Vancouver for example is usually 2 degrees, while Toronto for example is a few degrees below 0. Not to mention you'll get a good 6 months of good weather. As for economics prosperity, I also live abroad and I've seen Nigerians who are losers and some who are winners. You see here unlike naija, your destiny is literally in your own hands. Yes ones qualification will most likely not be recognized, because Nigeria's educational system is a joke. So one can easily go back to school for the 4 years and obtain Canadian qualifications, or they can sit down and continue to complain. I've seen many Nigerians obtain good jobs with 2-4 years after arriving here through hard work and networking. My cousin arrived here 8 months ago and faced the same issues. He took a professional exam, used his naija bank experience, and just got a very good working for a major bank here in Canada. All this within 8 months. He has his own place, gets paid ON TIME, has money in the bank, etc. He shakes thinking what his future would have been like had he stayed in naija. Whereas I know useless Nigerians who have been here for 10+ plus and still do minimal jobs. Here is based on merits. And yes over here you have to work for everything you get. Lastly this made me laugh. "With that kind of salary you earn in Nigeria, no county will reject your visa". To begin with, the money he makes is small boy change over here. What's that 800 or so Canadian dollars. And secondly, as you can see with Trump's executive order, 3rd world passports aren't respected around the world. So long as you carry that green passport, you're never guaranteed a visa period.

I'm always confused why people who live ABROAD always discourage those back home to come abroad. With all your "hardship" abroad yet u still dey there. Enemy of progress I swear.

denex:
Fish Farming is great. I studied Animal Science in school but always envied those in fisheries.

Please if you know what is good for you, do not attend those seminars on catfish. Even if you do, do not listen to what they say.

The fishery I managed in Lekki had about 10 small ponds started with almost 4000 fingerlings. I learnt some hard lessons. The worst is selling the fish off, but I'll start with the first.

Cost of feeding. It may seem moderate in the initial stages, but towards the end, about 5 months time, you'll hate life. So I suggest you don't go spending recklessly on feed. The plan I came up with was to start feeding the fingerlings with the pelleted type floating feed that is obtainable from CHI. After 2 months then you start feeding them with the cheaper not pelleted locally made feed. Till they reach market size.


Shade your fish pond from sunlight. The more shade the catfish have, the less active they are so they burn less energy exercising. The shade also makes them less aggressive so less cannibalism. Thereby less loss.


It's also good to sprinkle a little salt. It works but I haven't proven how. Its not my theory so its not up to me to prove it. But it works.


This next step is something I don't know if I should prescribe. Well, if you're operating in a truly intensive atmosphere, and you know the catfish are almost always in shade, try to reclassify the fish by selecting the bigger ones and putting them together in the same pond but at lesser stocking density. This will allow those smaller ones left in the pond to grow at faster rates. Remember, if you have not taken measures to reduce the aggressiveness of your catfish, don't try this! If you do, they big fishes in the same pond will compete for dominance and territoriality of the new pond they're in and some may die.


By the third month of farming your fish, you should start bringing fish dealers, market women, pepper soup joint owners and restaurant owners to take a tour of your farm so you start building a customer base for the eventual harvest and market time in the next 2 months. Don't forget to inform neighbours too because its almost impossible to sell your first harvest in bulk. You may find some dealers that may book to buy all of your harvest. Good for you. But if someone else gets there a minute before them, SELL! SELL!! SELL!!!
The saddest thing you'll experience is keeping and feeding market size fish fox weeks because of lack of buyers.


Let your market price be moderate. About N300 is okay, depending on your location. So keep this in mind through every step of your production process. Limit your spending to what will give you reasonable profit at the end of the day. Remember, assuming you start off with 5,000 fingerlings,
cost of fingerlings (approximately) N50,000.
Cost of feed at approximately N4,000/day is N600,000.
Preliminary recoup on fixed cost N100,000.
Some kain yeye, yeye cost N50,000.

So at the point of harvest if you're left with 4500 adult catfish, at N300 each,
that's N1,350,000.

So profits may lie in the area of N1,350,000 - N800,000

=N550,000 or less. Not bad for a beginner.



Then finally, I would like you to realise that there are a lot of Chinese coming into Nigeria these days. Besides that, there are lots of Chinese restaurants. The Chinese have their own species of catfish and I believe if you can raise them here, you can charge cutthroat prices. You could sell each one for more than N1,000 each and it doesn't cost you anything more in raising them except the extra cost in acquiring the exotic fingerlings. So imagine selling 4,500 market size chinese catfish at N1,000 each. Thats N4,500,000. That gives about N3,700,000 or less. Not bad at all.

So take care and run things well. I just found a text from the Sino-Nigerian trade group or so. It contains phone numbers of 3 fishery experts sent to Nigeria by the Chinese government. I'm just seeing the document for the very first time and its tempting me to go back to fisheries. Hmmm. Well, I'll think about this. Free research consultation.

Well take care. I hope I dealt with all aspects. I'll post the Sino-Nigerian document differently. Its so loooong!


As for pig farming, not everybody eats pigs. In fact, less than a quarter of Nigerians eat pigs. Besides, I hate pigs. Their stench, their squeal and their weird little tails. I hate them. I used to skip practicals in school when it came to piggery.

FrancisDiote:
Buying and selling is not the best in Nigeria. Rendering services pays a lot. Think of marketable services you can render to Nigerians then you are in money.