Proceedings Forty-eighth Annual Meeting 83 



It will be seen that milk thickened with rennet or junket proved of no 

 value as a fish food, notwithstanding the fact that Dr. Embody, in earlier 

 experiments, had succeeded in rearing to fingerlings some rainbow trout fed 

 entirely upon thickened skim milk. The milk experiment had in con- 

 templation the use of a by-product from the creameries. While the results 

 of the milk experiment at Caledonia are regarded as final, the success in 

 another water supply confirms some views I have entertained that an 

 artificial fish food which is entirely satisfactory in water from one source 

 of supply may be quite the reverse in water from another source. It sug- 

 gests some ramifications of this subject too extensive for discussion now. 



These are crude experiments. We did not weigh all of the fish in each 

 instance, but we took a certain number of fish each time at random instead 

 of taking the total number under observation, which would be rather 

 difficult in an experiment on so large a scale. I hope Dr. Embody will 

 continue this work. I think it means a great deal. 



Now may I talk on the general subject of fish food, because perhaps 

 some of the suggestions will help others? The war just about doubled the 

 cost of fish food, as you know, and we had to resort to every possible make- 

 shift to raise fingerlings in increased numbers and still keep within a legis- 

 lative appropriation based upon pre-war prices. Where we were using 

 beef liver we changed to pig liver or to melts — very largely to melts. At 

 the Chautauqua Hatchery, where we operated nets for taking the museal- 

 lunge and kept the nets set for removing the bill fish or gar pike, we caught 

 a great many carp. The foreman raised some beautiful four inch fingerling 

 trout by feeding carp. The fish were about one and a half inches in length 

 when Mr. Winchester began feeding them carp. Foreman Winchester's 

 recipe for preparing the carp and suckers for fish food is as follows: 



"Hang them up, hooked in the mouth; cut around gills, down the back, 

 and on each side of the stomach. Pull the skin off with pincers. Then 

 strip the meat off the backbone and ribs and run it through The Enterprise 

 meat chopper." 



Near the Adirondack Hatchery there are lakes containing yellow perch 

 which, during the summer months, are grubby and the people don't care for 

 them. To get them out of the lake is a good thing. Foreman Otis caught 

 grubby yellow perch and fed them to the fingerling trout, and it proved to 

 be a very desirable food. The perch are skinned and then ground up in a 

 meat chopper, guts and all. At the Fulton Chain Hatchery a good many 

 suckers were used to feed the trout, after preparing them in a similar manner. 

 These perch and suckers are not of much value in the summer time as human 

 food. One might argue that carp is a human food, and I will confess to you 

 that if we had to buy the carp at 12 cents a pound, which is the wholesale 

 price, and then allow for the waste, it would be a very expensive food, but 

 the carp are undesirable in the lake where caught. 



Another year it is proposed to "beat the devil around the stump" by 

 letting some of the carp go to human consumption as war food, and arrange 

 with the man who markets them to furnish us liver or melts in exchange, 



