Joe Fletcher
No Longer a Member
Not if they are on your hair Joe.....
John I was talking about loose fed pellets
Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: This feature may not be available in some browsers.
Not if they are on your hair Joe.....
I guess the point is that it's quick, cheap and easy to extrude endless sausages of the paste and chop them up to form cylindrical pellets...but a whole new ball game to produce elliptical pellets. No doubt that is why the one and only company that made that shape pellets is no more, the production costs would have made them non competitive. Add to that the rising cost of their particularly effective ingredients, and it's not too surprising that they had to call it a day. .
Sad, but most likely true.
Cheers, Dave.
Dave, why would it be so much more expensive ? Surely they would only have to squash/flatten the extruding nozzle. Hey Presto, elliptical pellets
Or just glue them end to end. Does anyone really think it would make any difference?
Short answer Derek...I don't know. We have very few facts to work on, so obviously my thoughts were based on not a lot For what it's worth, my thoughts were...
(1) The company that failed was apparently the only one that produced elliptical pellets. Why? I assumed from that that producing such pellets was more expensive than producing the standard cylindrical shape....otherwise they would all be producing them.
(2) Even if only in angling terms, these pellets were in high demand...and yet the companies that successfully manufacture and market cylindrical pellets have not bothered to modify any of their existing equipment to fill that demand. Why? Again, one has to assume that producing these pellets is more problematical than a simple modification of existing equipment.
Having said that, it may be that the company that failed did so for entirely different reasons...who knows? Having given it more thought, I have to question why they chose to make a pellet of that shape to start with. It's no secret that virtually all of these pellets are manufactured for the fish farming industry. Many of the fish that are commercially farmed (salmon for instance) are surface to mid-water feeders. This means that they will naturally intercept their feed as it passes through the water column, and largely ignore the feed that reaches the bottom. So, it stands to reason that a slow sinking pellet will give the fish more time to intercept it, thereby making such a pellet more cost effective.
Perhaps the elliptical shape was that particular companies attempt at producing a slower sinking pellet, in that it would flutter down slightly, rather than the direct sink of a cylindrical version?
Perhaps the other companies took a simpler route to solving this problem...perhaps they merely adjusted the type of ingredients (added shrimp/krill meal for instance) to achieve the same result, which worked out to be more cost effective?
Again, who knows? All I do know is that for me, speculation of this type beats the hell out of bloody sudoku in keeping my ageing brain from completely vegetating from lack of use
Cheers, Dave.
I always heard that the elliptical shape was introduced so that they hung in the water longer so the trout had more opportunity to take them, causing less wastage.