Analysing feeds is an important part of diet formulation as different kinds of available feedstuffs vary in composition. A ‘balanced diet’ is the term given to a feed which provides all necessary nutrition to an animal and should simulate feeding behaviours. Animal feed should be formulated in such a way that it is highly digestible whilst causing the least amount of environmental damage. Initially, a variety of methods were used for feed analysis, such as the trial and error method, linear programming methods and other conventional methods.
Feed formulation and feed management have been major concerns to poultry.poultry industry to propose the best feed formulations for Yugoslavia. These findings are important for feed formulation because laying hens daily require the.ABSTRACT This paper describes a design requirement of feed formulation software for poultry industries in Nigerian. Easy to use software for 'Least Cost Feed Formulation' Equally useful for ruminants, non-ruminants, poultry, pets and fish etc Works in Linear Mode and Stochastic Mode Power to handle unlimited number of Ingredients and Nutrients On-screen editing facilities, attractive icons and user friendly menus.
As time passed different forms of mathematical programming were used for better results, methods such as stochastic programming, goal programming and other non-linear programming techniques. Manual calculations and applications are time consuming, tedious and prone to errors. As the number of feed ingredients increase, the complexity of feed formulation models also. On least-cost diet formulation program, but rather a simple excel- based diet calculation program.
The user selects ingredients and the program calculates the nutritional information of the formulated diet. The program also allows the user to insert other ingredients for a chemical analysis. Ingredient costs can be entered in the database and the program will calculate the ingredient cost of the diet formulation. ‘Fishfarm Solutions’ is a program designed for simple rations on the basis of Pearson square ration formulation. Nutrient contents of ingredients and nutrient requirements are expressed on the same basis. This excel sheet formulator needs a comprehensive list of all the feed ingredients with their protein levels as inputs.
Then according to the required quantity of feed, it combines different kinds of ingredients from the list. ‘Winfeed’ formulates diet for ruminants, non-ruminants, poultry. Layer feed formulation is divided into seven stages: starter, grower, developer, prelay, peak, layer one and layer two. This is user-friendly software that allows the user to edit, save, email as well has having the ability to print the output formulations. Any user input errors are highlighted if variables are not in the range of a breed’s requirement. ‘Kasturi’ is poultry management software that manages feed formulation for layers, hatchery, and broilers.
Covering all aspects of the hatchery, from housing of newly born c hicks to egg laying birds, setting of eggs, to hatching of chicks. Kasturi keeps a record of daily events such as mortalities, culls, feed consumption rates and type of feeds being used. It can formulate the feed, analyse nutrients, temperature, humidity, light, body weight, uniformity and vaccination schedule.
It can generate several types of reports on medication, vaccinations, sales, purchases, stocks and monthly performance among other options. ‘Ration Formula Express’ (RFE) for poultry produced by VETSOFT Software Corporation is a program based on least cost feed formulation. This poultry management program uses operation research techniques to formulate the least cost ration depending on the requirements of breed and prices of ingredients.
RFE has bilingual language capabilities for English and Arabic. It is based on feed composition according to NRC 1994. It also takes care of shadow price and provides results in the form of comparable decision sheets and graphs. These display the ration formula ingredient quantities, a nutrients analysis, as well as nutrients constraints and requirements. ‘Feedlive’ is used to formulate diet for swine, sheep, poultry and other animals. It is based on least cost formulation and linear programming. A special feature of this software is that it accumulates data on mono and polygastic animal feeds all into one place.
It is a MS windows application that can formulate feed for any batch size. Feedlive has the ability to analyse an existing formula, functioning in a backward operation. ‘Feedsoft’ Feedsoft® cloud formulation is a platform, which provides live statistics to individuals or small size companies with general formulation needs. It can also modify all nutrient data easily via its ‘nutrient editor screen’.
Feedsoft® is a user-friendly interface that is assessable via mobile phone. ‘Spesfeed’ s oftware is for poultry and other animals. It supplies and supports two different feed formulation systems ‘Spesfeed Express’ and ‘Format Internatio nal’, each offer their own advantages. Spesfeed Express is a small user friendly system, limited to a single user, it has a restricted amount of nutrient data tha t can be considered. Format Internatio nal has a wide range of software. It caters for large and sophisticated users. Features include a multi-user system which allows the manipulation of large data bases, multi-mix and global-mix formulation.
‘FeedMU’ is a simple feed formulation program, which uses the trial and error method, and linear programming to produce a least cost feed formula. It can be used for simple feed in animal farms and complex feeds in feed mill. It is a MS Windows based application developed using Visual Basic and.NET application for feed formulation. FeedMU uses information on animals’ requirements, ingredient details and feed composition to formulate a well balanced diet. It has a function to transfer requirements and ingredients data to others and it can export formula reports in PDF format.
Nutrition plays a major role in the profitability of animal production. Feed accounts for up to 70% of total poultry and swine production costs. The goal of a feeding program is to meet the nutrient needs of animals, based on optimal performance, with a mixture of ingredients, at the lowest cost. Achieving this goal requires a very complex process.
The purpose of this article is to discuss the important elements of establishing the nutrient needs of animals and how to match those nutrient needs with available ingredients. The ultimate goal is to optimize profitability by matching established nutrient needs of the animal with appropriate ingredient mixtures.The nutrient needs of an animal can be depicted by the following graph.At low levels of nutrient intake, animals will exhibit specific deficiency symptoms based on the specific nutrient(s) that are deficient. In this stage, animals are not receiving a diet adequate to support normal growth or productivity. No animal should ever be fed a deficient diet.A feeding program in the sub-optimal stage will prevent deficiency symptoms, but the animal still is not receiving adequate nutrition to maximize growth, egg production, and/or profitability. The National Research Council publishes nutrient requirements for different species. These estimates are determined by researchers who critically evaluate the scientific literature and determine “best” estimates of nutrient requirements.
These estimates are minimum standards and are not to be considered recommended nutrient allowances. This is mainly because the estimates include no margin of safety margin.The National Research Council publishes nutrient requirements for different species. These estimates are determined by researchers who critically evaluate the scientific literature and determine “best” estimates of nutrient requirements. These estimates are minimum standards and are not to be considered recommended nutrient allowances. This is mainly because the estimates include no margin of safety margin.The stage of optimum nutrition typically optimizes profitable production.
In this stage, animals are receiving nutrient levels sufficient to maximize productivity profitably. Nutrient requirements in this stage are best determined through sound production research.The law of diminishing returns would suggest animals should be fed just before maximized performance in this “optimum” stage to achieve maximum profitability. Often times this stage of nutrient levels has been historically used to provide a safety margin to account for variability in animals, feed ingredients, etc.
However, as ingredient costs increase, the acceptable safety margin continues to be challenged.Beyond this optimal stage of nutrition is a stage for special applications. Animal under immune challenges or applications where animals are being fed to meet a specific market demand may require nutrient levels in this stage. Otherwise, animals fed nutrient levels in this stage are only improving performance minimally or not at all. If there is not a specific need for nutrients at this level, feed cost is increased with no beneficial financial return.Feed is made up of several ingredients, which are grouped into ingredients providing energy (fats, oils and carbohydrates), protein (amino acids), vitamins, and minerals.
Cereal grains such as corn, wheat, and barley, plus additional fat will be used to mainly provide energy.Soybean meal, extruded and expelled soybeans, canola meal and poultry byproduct meal are used in diets to mainly provide protein. Ingredients must be evaluated for their nutrient content to help establish the amount of each ingredient to be included in the diet.Feed ingredients are chemically broken into the different components described above. However, to determine the suitability of ingredients for poultry and swine, it is necessary to break these components into smaller fractions.
For example, proteins are made of amino acids. Poultry and pigs don’t actually have a requirement for protein, but there are ten amino acids required to be in the diet at specified minimum amounts. In this case, it is important to analyze the amino acid composition of the feed ingredients.Likewise, ash is composed of several minerals (calcium, phosphorus, sodium, chloride, etc.), which are critical nutrients required at specific amounts in poultry and swine diets.
Analysis of ash alone gives very little information about the suitability of an ingredient to meet the nutritional requirements of the animal. More detailed analysis of the actual minerals making up the ash component is needed. In addition, the extent of how well these nutrients are utilized by the animal (usually reported as digestible or available nutrients) can also be utilized in feed formulation and are determined through extensive research.Chemical methods used to analyze ingredients are expensive and cumbersome, often requiring days to weeks to complete.
However, newer equipment and procedures have been developed, which enable the rapid evaluation of most materials. For example, near-infrared reflectance spectroscopy (NIR) is one technique used by Wenger Feeds to quickly evaluate feed ingredients for amino acids, protein, fiber, and fat.Nutrient content of ingredients can vary significantly from one supplier to the other. For this reason, it is important to determine the nutrient content of an ingredient by supplier. Nutrient content of an ingredient can also vary by season. Cereal grains like corn fill out ears poorly in drought years, which can reduce corn quality. New crop corn and soybean meal derived from new crop soybeans typically have a different nutrient content than corn and soybean meal from a previous year’s crop.Feed ingredients used in animal feeds must meet all guarantees and any pre-determined buying specifications.
These guarantees include both physical and chemical parameters. The physical evaluation provides preliminary information on the quality of the ingredient. This involves assessing physical qualities such as weight, color, smell, and whether the ingredient is contaminated with foreign material. This physical evaluation typically occurs in the ingredient receiving area of the feed mill and is a key step in the quality evaluation of a feed ingredient.Although the average composition of many common ingredients is known, ingredients can be variable. For this reason, the average composition of ingredients is typically discounted to account for the degree of ingredient variability. This helps to meet targeted nutrient needs, regardless of ingredient variability.
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Nonetheless, finished feeds should be analyzed on a routine basis to verify that the process used for ingredient analysis results in the expected final feed.The most important area to evaluate the suitability of an ingredient testing program is in animal productivity. When feed is given to animals, they are only able to break down part of the feed and absorb it into the body for maintenance, growth, egg production, lactation, etc. The rest is lost through feces and urine, which are excreted together by poultry. Animal productivity defines the real nutritive value of the feed and must be measured and utilized as part of an ingredient and animal nutrient needs evaluation.Ingredients must also be researched to determine optimum levels in feed.
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Many byproducts can be potentially used to reduce feed cost, but we must understand the influence of using the byproducts on animal performance. Often byproducts with proper nutrient values can be formulated into feed and result in no change in animal performance.
Feed Formulation Software
Typically, there is a maximum inclusion level at which higher inclusion levels result in reduced animal performance and/or the ingredient is no longer cost effective to use. These maximum inclusion levels can also vary by productive stage (i.e. Maximum inclusions might be lower in starter diets than finishing diets).Wenger Feeds has research capabilities to evaluate nutrient requirements and ingredients for layers, pullets, broilers, and grow-finish swine in production settings. These research locations are designed to test nutrient levels and ingredients in a “controlled” research setting but still in facilities similar to those found in actual animal production. Examples of research conducted in these facilities include: an evaluation of maximum inclusion levels of Distiller’s Dried Grains with Solubles (DDGS) in layer diets, meeting the body weight goals in pullets, estimating lysine and energy requirements of grow-finish pigs, and the influence of nutrition on skin and feather quality in broilers.In summary, nutrient levels less than targeted levels can result in suboptimal animal performance, and nutrient levels in excess of targeted levels add unnecessary costs. Both result in reduced profitability. The goal in formulation is to meet targeted dietary nutrient needs with sound, cost effective ingredients critical to meet financial goals.For more information about Wenger Feeds’ Products and Services.