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alternative feed
What are the challenges of using alternative feed ingredients in poultry diets?
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6 Replies
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yes
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1. presence of anti-nutritional factors
2. Low nutrient density
3. Palatability and feed intake
4. Variability in nutrient composition
5. Digestibility issues
6. Contamination and spoilage
7. Supply and consistency
8. Limited Research and Standard formulas
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Yes
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USING ALTERNATIVE RAW MATERIALS – FEEDPEDIA
Feedipedia (https://www.feedipedia.org/content/about-feedipedia) is an open access information system on animal feed resources that provides information on nature, occurrence, chemical composition, nutritional value and safe use of nearly 1400 worldwide livestock feeds.
Feeds datasheets contain the following information:
- Feed names, including vernacular and scientific names
- Description of the plants or plant parts/products used as feed
- Feeding recommendations for the main livestock species: poultry, cattle, sheep, goats, camels, pigs, rabbits, horses, fish and crustaceans
- Tables of composition and nutritive value
- Illustrations, including photos and processing charts
- Distribution and basic agronomic information
- Forage management
- Processes for improving nutritional value
- Potential constraints such as presence of anti-nutritional and toxic factors
- Environmental impact of the production and use of feeds
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There are a few challenges when it comes to use alternative ingredients in poultry feeds. The most important is likely to know the nutritional composition of the ingredient including amino acid profile, amino acid digestibility coefficients, and metabolizable energy. The second most common issue will be the consistency of the quality of the ingredient as well as the consistency of its nutrient content. As nutritionists handling ingredient variation is usually not a big problem because we can reformulate diets. The real problem is not knowing the degree of the variation and assuming that we have a constant ingredient quality with constant nutrient content. Some ingredient nutrient tables now include the average of a nutrient with its standard deviation and the number of samples used to obtain the average. We can use this information to determine how variable the nutrient content of an ingredient. However, we can only be certain of the nutrient composition of an ingredient when it is analyzed using wet-chemistry or near-infrared spectroscopy. Content and variation of the content of anti-nutritional factors in many alternative ingredients is also hard challenge to overcome. The third issue with alternative ingredients is to find adequate availability or supply of an alternative ingredient that would make worth the investment in time to reformulate diet(s) to include the new ingredient.
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Using alternative feed ingredients in poultry diets and challenges related to nutritional value, potential toxicity, processing needs, and economic factors. These ingredients may have lower nutritional value compared to traditional corn and soybean meal, require specialized processing to reduce anti nutritional factors and can impact feed costs and availability.
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