LAKE DIEFENBAKER, Sask. – Dean Foss tosses a scoop full of pellets toward the waiting livestock.
As soon as the feed hits the water, there is a flurry of activity. Like other livestock, rainbow trout know when it’s feeding time.
The stock at Cangro Fish Farm, located on Lake Diefenbaker in central Saskatchewan, ate one million kilograms of feed last year, making it the highest-cost item, said Foss, production manager.
That’s why research into new feed, using prairie crops, is being done here.
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Paul Adelizi, a feed scientist with Saskatchewan Wheat Pool’s research and development department, has been testing crops like canola, flax and peas as replacements for more expensive ingredients. The pool owns Cangro.
Two of those ingredients are fish oil and meal. The prices are escalating because demand is high – aquaculture is booming, El Nino is creating uncertainty and fish stocks are declining.
“We can’t let the price of fish meal climb and climb and climb,” Adelizi said from a Cangro office overlooking the operation. “We could replace a significant portion of fish meal.”
His research hasn’t been without challenges.
He said peas are an obvious choice because they have fairly high protein content. However, peas also contain trypsin inhibitors, which interfere with digestion, and trout are particularly sensitive – 25 times more so than humans.
Canola is another obvious choice, since prairie production is on the rise. The meal is less than half the price of fish meal, but canola is “trickier” to work with and has a limited use in fish feed, Adelizi said.
“If we do start replacing fish oils, flax or canola or a combination of the two are a good replacement because the fish are still getting something of nutritional value,” he said.
“Right now I don’t think you’re saving a lot (of money) using plant oils, but aquaculture is skyrocketing.”
Saskatchewan’s fish production is the third largest in Canada, and Cangro is the only major producer in the province.
Last year the plant produced 680,000 kilograms of rainbow trout. This year projections are for 900,000 kg, which could boost Saskatchewan into second place ahead of Quebec and behind Ontario.
The trout go mainly to American markets when they weigh between two and four kg.
Adelizi said by developing different feeds, Cangro could actually produce “designer” fish, but that would have to be market driven.
For example, higher flax content could produce a fish with more omega 3 fatty acids. Certain sunflower oils grown on the Prairies contain monounsaturated fats, which could improve shelf life and still offer health benefits to consumers, he said.
Cangro recently entered a strategic partnership with Agro Pacific Industries, one of the largest feed manufacturers in British Columbia. Adelizi said his ingredient testing in small tanks looks promising and the next step will be to have Agro Pacific include these ingredients in its formulations for production-scale testing in the lake pens.
“Paul is progressing toward eliminating fish meal and that could decrease our feed prices and make us more competitive,” said John Bielka, Cangro’s manager of aquaculture operations.
Management is also looking for better feed conversion. All the trout at Lake Diefenbaker are sterile females, Bielka said. That way, they aren’t putting all their energy into egg production and if they “escape” they are no threat to the wild fish population.
“When the females are sterile they have better feed conversion and less mortality,” Bielka said.
Males are undesirable because they lose their pigmentation, making them less valuable in the marketplace.
Cangro is also adding an indoor production unit to grow fingerlings larger before they are released into the lake cages. The unit will contain 300,000 fingerlings.
