How to reduce the cost for shrimp farming?

As we all know, all over the world, the cost of shrimp farming has been increasing in recent years. There are two aspects are the main reasons: firstly, the success rate of shrimp culturing is too low which is less than 30%, the growth rate of shrimp is also low, then the culturing period becomes longer, and ultimately leads to increased culturing costs, finally, result in lower profits for shrimp farmers; secondly: the price of feed material including raw material and feed additives keep going up, which leads to production costs of feed factories also goes up, then prices of feed  increases too, which ultimately leads to the production costs of farmers increases too.

Question 1: how to reduce the culturing cost for farmers?

As all farmers know, Shrimp farming mainly includes three parts which are shrimp, water and feed. If above three parts are all in good conditions, shrimp culturing will be successful, otherwise, it will be difficult to have a good harvest. 

Firstly, how to choose the PLs for farmers. And how to keep the shrimp healthy.

Selection of PL: before purchasing PL, ask testing report which are including WSSV, EHP, EMS and IHHNV from supplier, and all must be negative. And get some PLs rear in your pond water for 24h, if no any death, then you can purchase.

Keep shrimp healthy: as we all know, hepatopancreas is the most important organ for shrimp, I called it shrimp “Engine” which has multiple functions, such as digestion, absorption and storage of nutrients. In aquaculture industry, there are many factors which can damage hepatopancreas of shrimp, the worse-case scenario is that most of farmers are ignoring those factors, such as sudden change of water parameters, mycotoxin from feed. Maintaining the health of the hepatopancreas and repairing the damaged hepatopancreas are already one of the important tasks in shrimp farming. A healthy hepatopancreas is beneficial to the digestion and absorption of nutrients, improves the immunity of shrimp, thereby increasing production and profit.

Secondly: Controlling of water quality

Maintaining good water quality: keep the key water parameters within normal range, ammonia nitrogen is less than 0.5mg/L, nitrite is less than 0.1mg/L, pH is between 8 and 8.5, total alkalinity is higher than 120mg/L.  If the water parameters are out of range, it will definitely cause shrimp stress and damage the shrimp organs. In order to maintain good water quality,  do not overfeeding; applying some probiotics to control the water; employ some product to improve the health of hepatopancreas, such as Bile acid. 

Pathogen controlling: Recently, many farmers are facing EHP and Vibrio problems.

EHP: EHP is an intracellular parasite, which is difficult to completely kill. In the early stage , some essential oil products can be used to control the spread and mass reproduction of EHP, which has a certain impact on production, but once reaches the late stage of infection, it will cause white faeces , the shrimp stopped eating, and caused huge mortality, farmers have to clear the pond, causing huge economic losses. At the same time, it is difficult to completely sterilize  the pond which infect by EHP. Strongly advice that the entire pond must be thoroughly disinfected before starting next crop.

Vibrio: It is reported that about 14 species of Vibrio can infect shrimp, such as: Vibrio harveyi, V. alginolyticus, V. anguillarum and Vibrio parahaemolyticus. monitoring the number of vibrio regularly, and use essential oil products from the beginning of the culture to control vibrio. Otherwise, it will cause white faeces and lead to failure of culture. Trying to detect vibrio as early as possible to ensure have a good harvest.

Thirdly: selection of feed

Nutritional balance, easy digestion and absorption: According to your own culturing methods, such as extensive, semi-intensive and intensive, choose good quality and nutritionally balanced feed to improve feed utilization, reduce FCR, and improve shrimp immunity, thereby promoting shrimp growth, then shorten the culturing period and reduces the risk of culturing.

Question 2: How to reduce costs from feed?

All farmers know that feed cost is the largest cost in shrimp farming, about 60% of the entire farming cost. Manufacturers of feed ingredients, feed additives, and machinery are all trying to reduce the cost of shrimp feed. I will briefly introduce something in following part.

Using of new feed additives: As we all know, a certain amount of cholesterol needs to be added into the shrimp feed, but the price of cholesterol is pretty high，is about 16000 USD/kg. Therefore, some large feed companies have begun to use bile acid to replace 20% of the cholesterol in the feed. , Thereby reducing the cost of feed, meanwhile, bile acid can improve the utilization rate of fat, thereby reducing the amount of fat added in the feed, reducing the feed cost again.

Replacement of protein sources: As the price of animal protein such as fish meal has been rising, many large feed companies gradually use plant protein to replace animal protein, while some additives are supposed to be added in the feed to ensure nutritional balance, thereby reducing feed costs, and achieved good results

Improvement of processing technology: Large-scale feed machinery manufacturers from all over the world are trying their best to do the research of high-efficiency equipment to reduce the cost of feed processing. Each ton of feed can be reduced by 200 RMB, about 30 US dollars.

The reduction of cost and increasing efficiency should be a hot topic in the following 10 years for shrimp farming industry. More and more companies would continually increase investment to study how to reduce farming costs. In the field of reduction of cost and increasing efficiency ,  Lachance Group has been at the forefront of the industry, and already has a very scientific solution for it. If you want to know details about it, just feel free to contact us directly.