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Abstract
The culture of channel catfish, Ictalurus punctatus, is an established industry in many areas of the southern United States. Improvements in feeding regimens would economically benefit producers. The present research was designed to evaluate the effect of feeding time (AM vs. PM), feeding frequency (one vs. two times a day) and intermittent fasting (6 days of feeding, 1 day of fasting) on production, feed conversion ratio (FCR), survival, weight-length relationship, percent dressout (headed and gutted carcass per unit live weight), and body composition of channel catfish reared in earthen ponds. Treatments consisted of: (1) feeding catfish once daily to satiation at 0800; (2) feeding catfish once daily to satiation at 1800; (3) feeding catfish twice daily at 0800 and 1800; and (4) feeding catfish once daily at 0800 for six consecutive days followed by one day of fasting. Twenty 0.04-ha ponds were stocked with 135 sub-market (average size: 182.6 g/fish) catfish and 600 fingerlings (average size: 18.2 g/fish), resulting in a total density of 18,375 fish/ha. Each treatment was assigned to five ponds at random. Fish in all treatments were offered a commercial floating catfish diet. A portion of the marketable catfish were harvested in mid-summer and the ponds completely harvested in the fall. Production parameters (e.g., bio-mass, weight gain, FCR, and survival), percent dressout, and weight-length relationship of catfish did not differ among the four treatments (P > 0.05). Percent dry matter and percent lipid of the fillet offish fed once daily at 0800 seven days a week were significantly higher than those of fish in all other treatments (P ⁁ 0.05). The percent crude protein of the fillet offish fed once daily at 1800 seven days a week was significantly higher than fish fasted one day a week (P >0.05). These results indicate that as long as the fish are fed to apparent satiation there is no advantage to multiple feedings, to feeding at a specific time of day, or to intermittent fasting in earthen ponds.
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