By Olusanjo Awotunde
Business generally is supposed to be a blessing especially when it is lucrative. Fish farming, like other agricultural businesses, can for instance be so profitable but at times may be funny. Funny in the sense that it may not give profit, but rather generate touching stories.
I had never ventured into a business where I am a novice. I do try my best to ensure I study the business model before going into it. Therefore, my failure as a fish farmer did not mean I was a novice in the business even though it was my first experience with my own hard-earned capital.
I bought 400 Juveniles (small fish just bigger than fingerings) from a reputable firm. The fish were doing well for the first few weeks in the two concrete ponds kept them. But it was quite surprising how my fish refused to yield good results at the end of harvesting. Ranging from high mortality rate to weight loss, the business only yielded sweat and loss. I will like to highlight some of the problems that led to the poor result so that you too can learn from the experience.
The first problem was my lack of time. For me I believed 400 fish was too small to take all my time, so I just continued with my normal daily struggles leaving the fish with one of my brothers, a secondary school student, to take care of them whenever I was not around. This alone contributed a big reason for the poor result. The reason is that, at times, the fish would not be fed in the morning – in fact, until my brother came back from school. You know students rush to schools and forget any other activities till they come back. This really affected their growthto the extent that none of my fish weighed 1kg in 6 months.
High mortality rate came in after this. The cause of this was in two folds. Firstly, the fish were not well fed and, as a result, they started eating themselves. Secondly, the water in the pond was not changed as and when due. We all know fish cannot cope with unfriendly water. As a result of this, the fish were dying seriously.
I did not know the extent of my loss until marketing period. Of course another issue was that I did not have any potential buyer, so I started telling people to provide me with a fish buyer.
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Because I was too desperate to sell the product, I was provided with one local fish buyer who asked me to count the number of fish in the pond and also weigh them. To my surprise, I counted two hundred and five fish. Ha! 205? Out of 400?. This is when I started realizing that I had incurred a lot debt. Also, only a few of my fish weighed 600g, some of them weighed 400g. Well, I summoned courage and asked the woman to come and buy them off.
I know you will be thinking that the story is over when the buyer came to buy the fish. For where! That’s not the end of the story o. When the buyer came, we packed all the fish in 3 bowls. You can’t imagine how the lady started selecting the bigger ones, neglecting the smaller ones. We weighed the selected ones to be 51kg. She bought them at the rate of #850 per kg, making N43.350. Four hundred fish going for such amount.
It is not yet over, my people. We returned the remaining fish to the pond and now faced the pain of selling to a local buyer. Meanwhile, the lady could not afford to pay the money fully. She gave me N22,000 begging to pay the balance by 4pm that day. Up till now, the time remains on the spot of 3.59pm. No chance for 4pm since then.
The problem continued. I continued feeding the remaining fish from the N22,000 I was paid by the local buyer. Hmm! When I exhausted the money, I started admonishing myself, “O boy, forget the fish matter and move on, or will you continue feeding fish with your own money? I knew I had failed in the business, so to avoid further loss, I started giving people the remaining ones free while my family also started cooking.
I must say this is not a way of discouraging new farmers, though. As a matter of fact, I did the business again and earned a good profit. I hope to write about some of the other things I did in the subsequent adventure. But all fish farmers, especially the new ones, should learn from my story and never make such mistakes that cost me my hard-earned money.
