Why Evaluate Complete Diets?
In order to become more sustainable, feeds need to be formulated with more sustainable ingredients that still retain nutritional, physical and economic characteristics of the ingredients that they have replaced. The F3 (Future of Fish Feed) Team has created a set of protocols for ingredient evaluation for nutritional and physical characteristics.
However, at the end of the day, an ingredient is included in a Feed that comprises an entire diet, or Complete Diet (CD). Consequently, the CD needs evaluation. Another reason for CD evaluation is that for commercial CDs, the ingredients themselves are often proprietary. Our Feed Evaluation Workflow below outlines an approach to evaluate CDs to establish a baseline for comparison with other complete diets by species and across species. The terms and definitions used in this flowchart are found here.
Hover over the boxes for a short description of each process. Click the underlined boxes to obtain detailed protocol information (PDF).
Researchers in Feed Companies, Academia, and Government
Do you have suggestions for enhancing the protocols?
Feel free to make suggestions, as they are in a process of continuous improvement, by emailing f3fishfreefeed@gmail.com.
Are you testing new ingredients or new feeds?
Researchers who are testing new ingredients can follow the steps below to test their new ingredients. Once test results are available, the ingredient and results can be entered into the FIN ingredient database under construction.
Fish Farmers
Do you want to understand how to trial new feeds on your farm?
The Complete Diet testing protocols will give you information on how to perform the test new feeds on your farm, so that you understand the effect of the new feed or feed ingredient on fish performance.