actually a lot of people are interested in the Agriculture n Aquaculture sector. but not much exposure and the info is NOT readily available. we have to go by trial and error.

hope the govt can change this so info can be readily available

Yeah, rabbitry guy, can provide some insights? Much appreciated! Btw, how good is rabbit droppings as fertilizer?

Gov websites play a vital role of providing information, but they are not that properly maintained, but still its better then nothing. For example it took 10mins just to load that sabah agriculture dept website, not much info inside, but got some financial plans and economics for planting certain types of crops, not sure if the content update enough to reflect nowadays price or not, but at least they give you some idea what you need to budget.

By simply putting up "agri is businss" banner wont help much, it is up to one person's initiative. If one is really interested about fish farm, he will not sit there and wait fish come to him, he will go out and find out about it.

May i ask, whats the difference of interest in agriculture or any field, and interest in money?

Lets me tell a story..



Agriculture is business. So, hey, are you interested in the business part or the agriculture part?

Example, our thread host, paraOptical, I talked so much about chili, sweet corn, blah, hes determined to raise fish, I can see he is most interested in tat field.

This post has been edited by rexis: Sep 21 2007, 11:42 AM

thanks for the info rexis, looking through it now. but sometimes i dont get it, goat price is all jack up because of breeding demand is it? The price won't be as good after few years later I guess. I'm still not known of goat meat standard price yet. When I checked with http://www.flfam.org.my it doesn't include goat meat in the pricing.
Currently I'm looking more into Boer breed, Jamnapari a different breed because from what I noticed it looked like a llama than a goat when it is fully mature. Not much info from the internet for Jamnapari though, maybe I'll try with different keywords.

Jamnapari afaik is a hybrid breed from indonesia, they grow bigger, faster, and can milk. I think they are expensive as they are still scarce and mainly for breeding purpose. For the goat meat price, if i were you, I will go to wherever you can find mutton to query for their supplier and from there you find out about their price. That would be mamak stall, western food, etc etc.

Goat price actually depends on the breed, if local 'kacang' breed, I thinkn it cost around RM40-70 each. And breeding goat of course cost more, as it takes longer for goats to mature then to reach marketable size. I hear say that gov will provide you goats(not thouse bizzare breed of course) if you willing to start a goat farm, but not sure about the details.

You didnt see a price for local goat meat there because really little people breed goat for meat locally, 97% rely on imports, what you think?

Internet... limited agriculture info, especially practical one, must go into field and get your hands dirty

This post has been edited by rexis: Sep 21 2007, 12:04 PM

Now, the rabbit farm is my part time only. Now i am expanding the farm, start import show quality buck and doe from over sea to breed.

Difficulty: not enough money. and our weather is really challenging.
I have invested more than 80k. Still putting in money.....
I involved in pet rabbit sector because not many people involved. My aim is the largest pure breed pet rabbit farm in Malaysia. Hope can achieve it.

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Added on September 21, 2007, 12:16 pmMy experience is we have to do own research by internet and books and try.
I have learnt a lot of farm management, animal nutrition and etc in university, mostly is poultry and dairy farm. Never learnt about rabbit. I went through many books and internet, see how oversea people breed the rabbit, how to build the farm house, what to feed and many more.
I also applied what i have learnt in university about poultry and dairy, modified a bit then applied in my farm.
Never depends on Government, better depends on ourself.

This post has been edited by beh_yo_rabbitry: Sep 21 2007, 12:16 PM

partime? so who take care of the daily affairs of this farm since u do it parttime? food for rabbit , cleaning, etc.. ?

Ahh, a part timer. I know in KK, Sabah, the weekly market at Gaya Street there a lot of pet rabbit stall. No idea where they breed their rabbit, but perhaps you can have an idea where to look for interaction among local 'rabbitrier'.

I dont know too much about rabbit, but I do understand that the entire autralia continent do have rabbit problem and is one of their major agriculture pest(like mice problem in oil palm plantation), which started from some old time colony westerner that brought in rabbits as their hunting game, the rabbits escaped and over breed, autralia climate is somewhat hot and dry, perhaps you can look for some suitable breed from there?

Do Malaysia have any local rabbit species? Cross breed them Or perhaps breed the rabbits for a few generation, their kids might be more torelate to malaysian climate. - Got this conclusion from an article about breeding earthworm

This post has been edited by rexis: Sep 21 2007, 02:53 PM

Rabbit's feces is a very good organic fertiliser. It will encourage the growing of earthworm.

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Added on September 22, 2007, 12:56 amOr I can say is i have two full time job. I am a tuition teacher and a rabbit farmer. I have a worker will do all the routine works. I only go there twice or three times a week.

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Added on September 22, 2007, 1:12 amIn Australia and many other countries, wild rabbit is considered as pest. I have read from books, the government there purposely introduced virus in to wild rabbit/hare to kill them. But they still have pure breed as pet. They have rabbit show also.

From what i learnt, no any breed of rabbit originated from Malaysia.
From my opinion is, for pet purpose, mostly people prefer pure breed. Malaysia is quite hard to see pure breeds. There is 45 recognized breeds by ARBA. I have registered my farm and i as a member. So I can update myself.

Although our climate and weather is hot and humid, but once the imported breed adapted, then the problem is solved. This will take about 1 month times. Our climate is quite stable. The temperate country which has 4 seasons, there is extreme cold and hot. Heat stress is a mojor problem in animal farming. Thats why major poultry farm is using closed system.

If for meat production, you may crossbred the rabbit. Like what our goverment has done to cattle, fish, prawn, and some plants. But it cost a lot. But I have visited to 2 meat production farm. My view is the rabbit in their farm is too small/light. I think is about 3 to 4 kg only. It is not efficient enough. Rabbit have to spend about 5 months to achieve the mature size. I am not in meat production line, I really don't know when will they slaughter the rabbit.

This post has been edited by beh_yo_rabbitry: Sep 22 2007, 01:22 AM

So have you utilize this as a potential side income? How much for each unit weight of your rabbit feces? Or you just throw them away?

My landlord take the feces as organic fertilizer for their sugar cane.

so do ur landlord pay u money for da feces?

No lah. Because the landlord help me a lot. I seldom back to farm, only twice a week. He help me to jaga the place. Further more, i am not ready to start doing decomposting the feces. So i give free lah.

Engineer a red hot success growing chillies

http://www.nst.com.my/Current_News/NST/Sat...82744/index.pda

He is now raking in the ringgit producing chillies for a giant food manufacturing corporation.

Asked what made him quit his factory job in Bangi, Selangor, to return to Kelantan to take up farming, Alamin said it was in his blood. His father was a tobacco farmer, and being an only child Alamin said he had always planned to return home to take over the running of the farm.

His father's death in 2004 hastened that decision. The 24-year-old graduate of Kuala Lumpur Infrastructure University returned to Kampung Gong Pasir with wife Siti Nur Atikah Mejam, 24, and their four-year-old son in tow, to look after his mother and work the 0.6-ha farm.

Last year, Alamin decided to switch from tobacco to red chillies. The decision paid off handsomely. His 3,000 plants yielded 10 tonnes of red chillies. This year he hopes to raise his harvest to 15 tonnes by adding 2,000 plants.

"Growing tobacco is costly and needs a lot of attention. Chillies are easy to take care of with the fertigation system," he said.

Plants are grown in polybags with tubes attached to them to feed water and nutrients from a central feeder station, he explained.

Alamin looks after the farm alone and hires workers to help with the harvest.

The chillies are sold to the Bukit Awang Farmers Organisation here at RM2.40 per kilogramme. The farmers organisation is contracted to supply the chillies to Nestle Malaysia for the production of chilli sauce.

Besides growing chillies, Alamin is also doing his own research on various types of chillies and finding ways to improve them. His mechanical skills are also being put to good use. Alamin is working on a mini sprinkler system to spray pesticides.

Alamin said his farming experience has been enriching and rewarding.

"I have no regrets. I am earning about what I used to make. But I am the master here and I get to spend more time with my family. I'm happy," he smiled.

He says he is looking forward to helping to mould future generations of farmers when Bukit Awang's mentor programme gets off the ground.

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the power of the fertigation system.

http://www.chinabreed.com/

china agriculture webiste

Whao, being an agriculture website, it is suprisingly updated! It has market price for all the products and news. Furthermore it has shit lots of analysis, market news, etc etc...

Unlike our gov agriculture website....

This post has been edited by rexis: Oct 2 2007, 09:37 AM

haha...tell me about it.
too bad i cant read chinese.
frankly speaking we dont have a good resource website for malaysian agriculture.

Agree!!
Our local government officer only mind their own business. There is no link each other.
We have to depends our self to find info.

Agriculture Information Center India

It is in english and it is pretty informative

one look at the website already i am impressed by it...hope MY Agri Dept can learn something from them...

*scouting out the website now*

Hi,

Another round of updates as per 10/10/07


My Red Tilapia + Jelawat (aka Sultan Fish) + Patin


My Red Tilapia + Jelawat (aka Sultan Fish) + Patin 2


My Red Tilapia + Pak So Kung (aka Baung)