MONDAY: 01/07/2013. EDUCATION BEYOND MEAL TICKET. I am not a very good fan of former president Olusegun Obasanjo but I secretly follow his column on Saturday Mirror. There are some facts that even if you are his gravest enemy and want to be sincere with yourself, you will agree with those facts to a 100%. He said Education is the antidote to poverty and ignorance and the key for unlocking natural resources and human potentials. He said education is the main plank for economic development and for transforming the man or woman to a responsible, self reliant citizen and that all the ingredients for success in life are delivered to the learner. True as he said, University Education is seen by many as a mere pathway to obtaining a certificate which they take to be A MEAL TICKET that will guarantee jobs and the good things of life. Few hours after leaving the University, they are hit with the realization that the beautiful certificates cannot fetch them EVEN THE UGLIEST MEAL. He said that the production of persons who are self reliant, creators of jobs and responsible members of the communities are EDUCATION BEYOND MEAL TICKET. In sum, it means delivering education that will not just be for paper qualification, a meal ticket but EDUCATION FOR SELF RELIANCE, A LIFE TICKET. He also said that youths should be trained from school to detect small business opportunities in villages, towns, and cities with entrepreneurial skills to take full advantage of such small business opportunities, which over time will grow into large scale businesses. He now concluded, “Why should our faculties of Agriculture not become Faculties of Agribusiness and Foods Production”? I asked you what you have deduced from these words of fact and wisdom as I welcome all of my friends and readers into the better half of 2013. THE FISH FARM BUSINESS (BOOK 2). THE FISH FARM MANAGER: The greatest challenge anyone can have in the fish farm business is time and attention. Once you miss out on this, you miss out on everything. There is the tradition for managing the fish farm successfully, once you follow the traditional instructions strictly, no doubt, you shall be successful in the trade. It is therefore imperative that in your search for your fish farm attendant, you look for not just that person that is hard working but that person who have special love for fish. You know when you choose a job that you love doing and find interesting, you will realize that there is no day you work! A person who is hard working but is forever complaining around your fishes is not the best guy for the job. You must love these fishes as you love your pet. They need all the time and attention to survive. You do not need that person with all of the qualifications. You need that person who can handle these fishes without fear or any form of irritation whatsoever. The fish farm manager could mind other businesses but his mind is forever with the fishes he is entrusted with. He will not want a single one of them to feel weak talk less of die. He knows the best time to feed them, he knows the ones that are infected and will immediately separate them from those ones that are healthy while he gets the best treatment for the weak ones. He knows the exact time to change their water; he will let them rest after changing their water before he decides to feed them. He will not rush them to eat because he has to attend to some other issues. HE JUST WILL TREAT THEM LIKE HIS BABY. The search for this person requires time and seriousness as he is the determinant factor if your business will succeed at all. There are fish farm managers who are full of grammar, majority of whom are over ambitious and will be counting how much profit you stand to make at the harvest period and is also wise enough to designing his ways of reaping you off your profits before you even begin to realize your return on investment talk less of your profit. You need a manager that is intelligent, wise and hard working. Not the one that is too smart to a point that he is almost dictating how to run your business for you. Do not get me wrong, your manager or farm attendant could advise you but you just must be smart at the same time. I know I am speaking with a matured mind who understands all of these. FEEDING YOUR FISH: Feeding the fish is an interesting part of this business but it could be harmful to your fish and dangerous to your business if you do not know what to feed, how to feed and when to feed them. Interesting as feeding may seem, you know you feel happy and pleased when you watch your own fishes playing around and coming up to you for food. You feel like their parents, their God as they come up to you with love and the hope of something good you have to give to them. You should at the same time follow all of these instructions as feeding may be dangerous to your fish and harmful to your trade. (A) WHAT TO FEED: Fishes have different stages of their growth and at each stage we have the size and the type of feed we give them to feed. We have the 2mm feed, the 3mm feed, the 4.5mm feed and so on. We have the feeds in the locally made form and we have the imported ones too. The most popular of the imported is the coppens. We have the locally made feed for the growers and we have the ones specially made for the finishers. Each with its own batch formulation. The juvenile are the youngest fish. Some people call them the fingerlings. It is good to feed the fish with coppens the first few days of their lives. That is from day one to like 6weeks of their early lives. Coppens have some nutritional elements which fasten the growth in fishes. These elements you may not get enough from the local feed. I know some people will say why not continue to feed them the rest of their lives with coppens. The truth is that coppens is highly expensive and is a threat to your profit. Secondly, the fishes will grow very fast yes but their weight is usually very low at the end. You should remember buyers will scale them while buying; they will not buy merely by just looking at them. You should improve to feeding them with the 3mm feed after 3 to 4 weeks. This should however be done for 1 week, yes feed them with 3mm for 1 week, that however depending on the response and especially the growth rate. We hope you remember what we said about water affecting growth rate and other factors. This depends on the geographical water survey report we have which of course must have given all of the information pertaining to the acidity level. You should at the end of the 5th or 6th week improve to 4.5mm feed. That is if your fish have started weighing between 500g to 600g. You then begin to feed them with our own local feed. You will continue with these local feeds until they are ready to be sold out since now you do not need so much of fat or obesity but a good weighing fish to sell. (B) HOW TO FEED: A lot of us make mistake and cause harm to our fish or even kill them in our attempt to feed them. We have said that fishes are like humans, treat them the ways you would have treated your kids. (1) Sprinkle feed gradually in their water in your attempt to feed. (2) Always make sure you give reasonable rest while you feed. Allow them to rest after every batch you sprinkle in. (3) Watch and be very sure your pond is not oily as you feed. Fish feeds at times come with more oil as is required. Too much oily water reduces oxygen and even causes bacteria and infection which might be harmful to your fish. Aside the major caution which you have to take while feeding, I am sure you are safe feeding your fish. (c ) WHEN TO FEED: Just like humans, we are addicted to certain periods that we feed. If we do not get food that usual time, we have suffered our being and have possibly affected some parts of our system. This is also applicable to the fish we are trying to grow out. Fish have their time too for everything. The juvenile stage or the 1st month requires that you feed them 4 times in a day with 2mm coppens every 6hrs. After the first month, you can now reduce the feeding to 3 times every 8hrs while your mixture is that of coppens and the local feed depending on their weight. I do not advise that you change the time frame as I see it the tradition which is working for most people. SORTING YOUR FISH: It is very good to sort your fish often as this helps the growth and the growth rate of fish. A good fish farmer takes this a priority as your feed is wasted when you do not separate your bigger fishes from the smaller ones. Fishes struggle for food. When you have more of the bigger ones than the smaller ones in the tank, naturally it is the bigger ones only you are feeding as they give no room for the smaller ones to access the food. The first sorting of your fish must be after the first 2 weeks, after the first month, sort at 3 weeks interval and be sure to be counting your stock as you are sorting. Fishes prefer to eat themselves than to eat their feeds. The bigger ones prefer to eat the smaller ones. The more you leave the small ones with the big ones, the less your stock as the bigger ones continue to feed and rest on the smaller ones to live. Separating the small ones into another tank is giving them a chance and a better opportunity to grow. Sorting can be stressful and time consuming. Depending on the volume of fish in stock, there are special sorters that can sort like 10,000 fish in 2 hours. It goes for like N50,000.00. Sorting must be done very early in the morning or late at night, never sort in the sun as this weakens or may kill fish. If you are to sort your fish by 5a.m. or 6a.m. in the morning, never feed your fishes after 10pm the previous night. Do not leave sorting to one person alone if you are to sort manually, one person sorts and another counts as delay may be harmful to your fish. Reduce your water level to like 10% as fishes are more active when they have enough of water to mingle in. They are more active as they have enough space to avoid you. It is another secret of the trade. THE PROFIT ELEMENT: We all do business to make profit. It is sad that a lot of us even after we have put in all of the efforts, we still loose out at the end of the day. At times we do not even realize back the initial capital we have put in talks less of making out profit from the trade. This is a very major factor or what is the purpose of putting in extra efforts in life, is it not for the purpose of making more money, building our wealth? The aspect of costing in every trade we do is most important. We do not just do business; we understand the amount we have put in too clearly. We understand it too clearly that moment we are able to clearly separate all of our costs from the revenue we have made from a transaction. It is very easy to manage the cost in the fish trade. We know the cost of purchase of our fingerlings, we know the cost of each feed we buy, we know traditionally what an average fish consumes, and we spare a portion of our cost for our overhead or other indirect cost. We understand that an overhead that is more than 30% is not healthy for business; as such we make sure our overhead cost is highest at 30%. WHAT IS OVERHEAD COST? For a few of us who don’t know. Overheads are indirect cost that comes up in doing our various businesses. A good businessman can separate his prime cost from other cost of doing his trade. For instance, in the fish farm business, our prime cost is the cost of buying the fish when they are young and the cost of the feed while we have the variable or the overhead as the cost of the water we use in the trade, the diesel we use in fueling our generator, the money we pay our farm manager or attendant as allowance, the Nepa bill beside all other cost like transport and haulage factor. THE SIMPLE ARITHMETIC: Today: All round coppens (imported feed) Cost of fingerlings or juvenile = N25.00 per unit. Cost of feeding each fish (Average) = N250.00 per unit. Overhead at 30% = N82.50 per unit. Guided cost of growing out fish = N357.00 per unit. The profit element (Coppens) Sales per unit (Average) = N450.00 per unit Total grow out cost = N360.00 per unit. Our profit = N90.00 per unit. If we have traded 2,000 units of fish, that means we do not make more than N180,000.00 in 4months! This is not good enough, what if some of the fishes have died and we do not harvest up to the 2,000 fish we invested? It is the reasons we have advised that we use a mixture in the life of the fish a period where we feed all of coppens alone and a period we finish or grow out with the local feed. We have said it that fishes or animals generally are like humans. You know there are certain stages in humans that no matter the amount of the nutritional foods we take, it does nothing again in our systems as much as it will do in our kids. So also it is applicable to fish and other animals. When they are approaching the finishing stage, we feed them with what we call the FINISHER. This contains more of the local feed with nutrients that will give strong bones, tougher skin, body structures and body weight. Today: Local feed + Coppens (Mixture of feed) Cost of fingerlings or juvenile = N25.00 per unit. Cost of feeding each fish (Average) = N130.00 per unit. Overhead at 30% = N46.50 per unit. Guided cost of growing out fish = N201.50 per unit. The profit element (Coppens and Local feed) Sales per unit (Average) = N450.00 per unit Total grow out cost = N201.50 per unit. Our profit = N248.50 per unit. This is more like it. We find this more interesting as if we have traded in 2,000 units, we have a chance of making N497,000.00 in four months and if it is 5,000 units an average farmer will trade, the profit stands at N1,242,500 while a farmer who will go all the way and use all the 1 plot of land on 100,000.00 units stands to gain N24,850,000.00 like twice in a year. We can assume 2 times or 3 times production in a year. A desperate farmer who is in a rush to sell off his stock for reasons best known to him will not make this profit. A farmer who is financially stable and will see no need for the rush can sell 1 unit for between N500.00 and N550.00. That is an addition of N50.00 to N100.00 to the profit we have dictated. Readers and friends should take note that for whatever reasons, profits dictated here may be more by a 20% or less by a 20% depending on our management ability in areas of negotiation, consumables like Nepa and cost of diesel, haulage, staff management and some other costs. We should not however be quoted as “he said this” as we are never perfect, no one is perfect. We should also take note that the average fish feed 1kg of feed to grow to a weight of 1Kg ready for sales. Once you buy a fish and the feed, it is easy for you to determine the cost of feed as a fish will eat an average of 1kg of feed for it to weigh that 1kg you target it for sales. 1kg feed equals 1kg fish. It is the tradition. The cost now varies depending on how much of the imported feed you have used or how much of the local feed. We also advise that during the purchase of your juvenile, you make sure the seller gives at least an extra of 20 units on every 500 units you have purchased from him. This will make up for a few of your fishes that you may loose while growing out or during the fish production process. We hope readers and friends understand this. MARKETING: Like we have always said, there is a difference between actualizing a profit and merely writing up profits in paper. In this trade, you start to make your profit the moment you have delivered your fish to the distributor and in return he pays you your cash. There are more reapers in this trade than the true buyers. The buyers will do sincere trade with you while the reapers will take advantage of your weakness. These buyers have been in the trade for long and naturally they know how well to reap a farmer off his profit. Follow these precautions when your fishes are almost ready for harvest. (1) NEVER BE IN A DESPERATE MOOD WHILE TRYING TO MARKET OR SELL YOUR FISH: Once you approach a fish buyer, he never shows interest even though he is very much interested to want to buy the fish, he will come up with so many excuse as reasons the business is not good at that time and once you have done your own calculation, for instance, you have budgeted the feed for 4months and you are approaching the end of the fifth month, you no longer have money for feed and all of that, you are scared the fishes may start feeding on themselves or they may begin to die. You think of the amount you have invested and are naturally desperate to want nothing now but the total money you have invested. Do not be surprised at this stage that you might even be ready to let go for as low as N300.00 per unit or even less, what a waste of time and money! (2) PREPARE YOURSELF AHEAD: It is advisable farmers begin to do their product marketing the 3rd month. This is to enable farmers have a long list of buyers for their stock. The nearer your buyer is to your farm, the better. This is no reason however to want to assume we cannot get better deals outside or in far places. We have people who come especially from the eastern parts of the country to Lagos who are better buyers. You know of these areas where our oil dealers have really affected their fish trade and some people their will eat nothing but fresh fish? Nigerians are fun loving people. The PHCN has made things easier as a lot of us would prefer the restaurants and eateries to relax. These are places where these stock fish sell most and falls directly in those hands that will buy it right. We have distributors and middle men who form the bridge between the fish farmer and the consumers. We can actually do without these middle men. It is a matter of doing our home work well. We still can create jobs here by employing the services of some youths who we pay and give commissions according to how many fish buyers they are able to get for us. We do not talk them into getting for us middle men who will dictate for us unrealistic price for our goods but a good relationship with the direct consumer who will by our fishes right. This we can only achieve if we give enough time ahead of our harvest period. I hope we understand this too clearly. (3) NEVER DRAIN YOUR WATER UNTIL YOU HAVE CONCLUDED NEGOTIATIONS AND BUYER IS READY TO PAY: This is another painful trick buyers use against unsuspecting or a first experience farmer in the push to buy the fish at a price that favours them. What they do is to give you that impression that they are so much in a hurry. Some will even give the impression they still will visit like 3 to 4 farms after yours that they are close to your farm, you should as such prepare the fish ready for them. The unsuspecting farmer yields to the demand instructing his fish farmer to drain the water and start packing the fish in the basins awaiting the buyer’s arrival. At arrival, you now begin to hear all sorts of excuses and complaints like why are these fishes so small? These ones contains more of runts that the giants. It will take a lot of time and personal efforts to convince consumers to accept these. Why are they looking so weak, how are we sure some will not be dead before we get to our destinations and all that. This is to scare you and give you the impression that your stock is not good. The unsuspecting farmers have weakened his fish and is scared some of them may die if they are returned into the pond and to avoid the risk decide to sell at a cheaper price the buyer is dictating. It is therefore imperative that we do not appear too desperate that time we are with buyers. In the selling and marketing attempt, we gain plenty of experience. I have only shared a few of my own personal experiences with you. My experience may differ from other person’s experience. It is just a guide for starters and 2nd timers. We therefore advise farmers who have tried a first time and failed not to give up as they go through this carefully and figure out those areas they have fallen, do the necessary corrections and try again. If not for anything, the amount they have ventured into establishing a fish farm, the purchase of land, the ponds and all other facilities that have been left to wallow away. NEXT WEEK MONDAY: We shall review some of our earlier talks and discussions which some readers are requesting with claims that they missed as they are just joining us. Remember, we are in the start of the better half of the year. We should be grateful to God for taking us this far and commit the rest of this year unto his hands. He alone is the best planner and the best executor of plans. Putting him off our plans is drawing up an estate project without a professional architect. We have every one with own targets. It is time to start to execute all plans. Dear Lord; to every eyes that sees this and to those who are not on facebook today, we table before you all of our challenges, all of our problems because we know that with you lord, all our problems we have conquered and as we conquer all of these problems, we accept our promotion. We establish and perfect all that concerns us and forward we move IJN. It is the Ramadan month for our dear friends in Islam. We join them in prayers as we begin to harvest all that is ours the rest of the year. Welcome to the remaining half of the year dear friends! To the few who have discovered this page, please continue to follow up and invite friends on our business page, BUSINESS ENTERPRISE WITH OLONADE ABRAHAM OLUFEMI and OLONADE ABRAHAM OLUFEMI’S wall. Both are on facebook. Happy new week again and sorry to the many fans of Bolt and Maria of the big brother house who were evicted yesterday.
Posted on: Mon, 01 Jul 2013 14:14:17 +0000
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