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Practical Poultry Feed Formulation: Feed Mixing and Ingredient Quality
Practical poultry feed formulation involves balancing nutrients, feed ingredients, and feed additives to meet the nutritional requirements of birds while maintaining feed quality and production efficiency. Proper feed mixing, ingredient selection, cost considerations, and quality control are essential for optimizing bird performance and minimizing unnecessary feed and medication costs.
This article discusses the key considerations in practical poultry feed formulation, feed-mixing practices, and quality requirements for commonly used poultry feed ingredients.
Key Considerations in Practical Poultry Feed Formulation
In a practical poultry feed formulation, a few vitamin and mineral supplements, lysine, methionine, a coccidiostat, an antimicrobial feed supplement, and one or more other categories of feed supplements are added to the feed to improve bird performance.
These nutrients (other than those in the regular ingredient mixture) and non-nutrient feed additives together account for less than 1 percent of the diet but add nearly 10 percent to the cost of the feed.
Feed Mixing
Mixing feed on the farm will not only reduce feed costs for the farmer but may also reduce medication costs because it can help avoid the repeated use of similar medications in feed and drinking water. Moreover, farm-mixed feed is fresh, and farm-grown and other locally available, inexpensive but nutritious feed ingredients can be utilized efficiently.
At the same time, preparing feed on the farm involves additional workload and capital investment. Since most raw materials have to be procured in tons or even truckloads, mixing feed on the farm may not be feasible or economical if the farm is small and the monthly feed requirement is less than 20 metric tons (MT). Farmers whose monthly feed requirement is in the range of 5–15 MT can arrange for custom mixing if such facilities are available locally. Alternatively, a few farmers in an area can join together and establish a common cooperative feed-mixing unit.
Certain feed ingredient dealers have facilities for grinding and mixing feed. They may provide these services to farmers at a reasonable cost if the feed ingredients are purchased from them. Farmers can have feed custom-mixed according to their feed formulas. Sometimes, certain feed manufacturers also provide custom-mixing services to their farmer customers. Before procuring various feed ingredients, the farmer should be aware of the monthly feed requirement. This can be calculated based on the approximate daily feed intake of 1,000 birds of different age groups.
After calculating the monthly feed requirement, the quantities of the different feed ingredients have to be determined. This requires knowledge of the nutrient composition of various feed ingredients and their inclusion levels. Local availability and cost will also influence their inclusion.
Most often, cereal grains are included at 50–60 percent as the major source of energy, while vegetable protein sources such as oil cakes and animal protein sources such as fish meal and meat meal are included at 20–25 percent and 10–12 percent, respectively. Agricultural by-products are added at 15–25 percent.
However, no single ingredient should be considered essential. The goal is to balance nutrients using several ingredients. Minerals need not be added individually. Identify the local season for each feed ingredient and purchase it when its price is low.
Quality Requirements for Poultry Feed Ingredients
- The ingredients purchased must be of good quality.
- The ingredients must be dry, with a moisture content of less than 10 percent, and free from molds and fungi.
- The ingredients must be free from foreign matter and adulterants such as sand, husk, cobs, etc.
- The proportion of immature and damaged seeds in the grains must be minimal (<5 percent).
- The aflatoxin level in the ingredients must be less than 0.02 ppm.
- The fish must be free from sand, salt, burnt fish, and other foreign matter such as shells, crabs, etc.
- The mineral mixture must satisfy the applicable feed-quality specifications.
