Chicken feed on the lake bed
Mud dredged up from the bottom of Lake Victoria, 20 metres down, could be turned into food for pigs and chickens, according to the director of the East African Fisheries Research Organisation (EAFRO), Mr R. S. A. Beauchamp.
After studying the composition of the fauna and flora that are found in Lake Victoria, his colleagues have discovered that there was not as much plankton (the minute vegetable growth on which the Lake Victoria fish feed) as they expected in the water, because of a shortage of sulphur. In lakes in temperate climates, millions of dead plankton, weeds and water animals fall to the bottom every year and when they decompose they return to the water the elements they took from it to grow.
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But the mud found on the bed of Lake Victoria is very slow to decompose because of lack of oxygen. This means that at the bottom of the lake, locked up in layers of mud which run to tens of metres deep, is the accumulated richness of thousands of years鈥� deposits. The water lying above is infertile for lack of nutrients.
Dr P. R. Hesse of the EAFRO used special apparatus to bring up samples of mud from the lake bed and tried to make it decompose in chemical laboratory tests, but it would only do so after he had either boiled it or allowed it to dry completely.
The EAFRO has suggested that swamps could be filled up with the rich lake mud to make good land for market gardens, but Mr Beauchamp also believes that, dried and powdered, the mud could become nutritious food for pigs and poultry because it contains numerous valuable minerals and also considerable amounts of protein.
The dried mud is, apparently, not unpleasant to eat 鈥� Mr Beauchamp has tried it himself and offered it to both his friends and family in order to prove his point.
From The New 杏吧原创, 21 March 1957