Pages

November 08, 2020

Evenly mixed feed essential for consistent livestock performance

by Christian Rabe, Applied Feed Technology, Evonik

Ensuring animal feed is uniformly mixed is important as it means that all added nutrients are available evenly within every feed ration. It is vital that the essential and low-dosed ingredients, including vitamins, trace elements, minerals, amino acids are available in the right volume within each final feed pellet.


A study conducted with 240 Ross broilers in a 42-day grow-out period by Ciftci and Ercan (2003) shows the impact of mixing homogeneity, expressed as coefficient of variation (CV) on important livestock performance factors.
 


Feed intake and feed conversion rate (FCR) show a moderate improvement with better feed homogeneity (10% CV vs 30% CV). At the same time, flock homogeneity improved significantly which is an important economic factor. The efficiency and the profitability of the production of live animals will be directly impacted by the homogeneity of mixed feed.

As a rule, homogenous feed mixes with a CV of five percent or below can be technically achieved under commercial conditions and are considered as optimal for livestock performance, particularly poultry. In this context, it is important that the analyte and assay which are being used for assessing homogeneity are suitable, sensitive and accurate to pick up the variation.

In regular feed production, mixing homogeneity is sometimes not managed well. Of nearly 100 commercial feed mixers tested, approximately 51 percent had mixing CVs less than 10 percent, and 19 percent of the mixers had CVs greater than 20 percent (Vogel and Laudert, 2015).


Read more HERE.
 

The Global Miller
This blog is maintained by The Global Miller staff and is supported by the magazine Milling and Grain
which is published by Perendale Publishers Limited.

No comments:

Post a Comment