The openening of the feed plant at Koronivia Research Station (KRS) this week will aid the Agriculture Department advance the quality and standard of agricultural services and yield in the Republic of Fiji.
The newly built feed plant is set to supply assorted types of quality animal feed for poultry (i.e. Day old chicks, layers and broilers), in addition to other livestock, such as dairy cattle to increase milk yield or for beef cattle for better quality prime meat, through superior research.
In openening the new $850,000 feed plant, Primary Industries Minister, Joketani Cokanasiga said that the feed plant is a crucial part of the plans for the Department of Agriculture's attempts to deliver quality services and better agricultural yield for the Republic of Fiji.
"These facilities will therefore undertake various researches in feed formulation; to test quality and availability of feed ingredients that can be grown by farmers," Joketani Cokanasiga said.
"At the moment, the raw ingredients for animal feed that are accessible to the market are required to be imported. We desire that through more research, we will be able to process locally available feed ingredients which will in turn reduce the cost of feeds," Mr Cokanasiga added.
The study's findings, which will result from the study's work to be taken on, will open a new stream of agricultural activities, that of contracted farming of the required feed ingredients which will economically add to increased income generation for rural farmers. This new stream of activities will involve the farming of maize sorghum and any other types of grains which could be known from the studys to be taken on at KRS.
Joketani Cokanasiga hopes that studys findings that will be upcoming as a result of research activities at this feed plant will be a forerunner to the building of other feed plants by others in the private sector who might be inclined to utilise the findings of KRS feed plant, and improve upon on the feed formulation, using the data available from Koronivia.
"The research work that this feed plant is set to be tackling has direct correlation to other sectorial policies within the Agriculture department, among these are the usage of locally available agro-industrial by-products to formulate animal feed ration for all types and all classes of livestock to make sure of and contribute to high levels of livestock yield and productiveness."
"In addition to the development of technology for conservation of high quality animal feeds for feeding during times of deficits or non-availability of supplementary animal feeds in times of droughts and the identification of high yielding and better pasture grass and legumes for improved levels of meat and milk yield."
The feed plant can output different varieties of livestock feed for different types of livestock and poultry and has different types of die to be able to output and deliver assorted sizings of pellet feed. The production capacity of the feed plant is roughly about 1.0 to 1.5 t/h, the production capacity of the feed mixer is 250kg of feed ingredients per batch and the total time needed to output a batch of animal feed is roughly 3 hrs.
