Insect Protein for Chickens

[Apis mellifera]

Finally got an answer from Purina about the NEW 19% Purina Layena +High Protein Layer Feed. Just as I suspected its the same stuff with 3% more plant protein! No surprise. Almost no BSFL in the bag. Plenty of corn.


Thanks for choosing Purina. We are unable to disclose percentages as they are proprietary ingredients. But below is a listing of an ingredient label from most to least in order of inclusion.

Ground Corn, Dehulled Soybean Meal, Corn Germ Meal(Wet Milled), Corn Distillers Dried Grains withSolubles, Calcium Carbonate, Dried Black Soldier FlyLarvae Meal, Cane Molasses, Salt, MonocalciumPhosphate, Dicalcium Phosphate, Oyster Shell, LigninSulfonate, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride, Manganous Oxide,Yeast Extract, Zinc Oxide, Tagetes (Aztec Marigold)Extract(Color), Choline Chloride, CalciumPantothenate, Vitamin E Supplement, RiboflavinSupplement, Vitamin D3 Supplement, Copper Sulfate,Yucca schidigera Extract, Niacin Supplement, ActiveDry Yeast, Menadione Sodium Bisulfite Complex(Vitamin K), Sodium Aluminosilicate, Vitamin B12Supplement, Dried Bacillus subtilis FermentationProduct, Inulin, Folic Acid, Vitamin A Supplement,Soybean Oil, DL-Methionine, Dried Aspergillus oryzaeFermentation Extract, Dried Bacillus licheniformisFermentation Product, Calcium Iodate, Sodium Selenite

 

[Perris]

There are a lot of problems with including insects in feeds on an industrial scale. This is the final section of a paper from 2014 on insects in animal feeds:
"8. Future research areas
1. For insect meals to be a significant part of the animal diets produced by the feed industry, these need to be produced and processed in large amounts and preferably must be available throughout the year. Currently, insect rearing is done at a small scale. There is a need for establishing, cost-effective, well optimized, mass insect rearing facilities that use well defined substrates, producing insects or insect meals of a defined quality.
2. For obtaining safe insect meals for use as feed, setting up of sanitation procedures for safe use of bio-wastes and managing diseases, heavy metals and pesticides needs to be considered.
3. There is a need to develop a regulatory framework and legislations for use of insect meals as animal feed, and to improve risk assessment methodologies.
4. More studies on evaluation of insect meals, processed insects or insect meals and insect proteins as livestock and aquafeed are required. These should be complemented with economic analysis.
5. Impact of feeding insect meals on product safety and quality from human health point of view, and studies on human acceptance of animal products obtained on feeding insect meals should be conducted.
6. Life cycle based studies on the environmental impact of using insects as animal feed vis-à-vis other protein rich animal feed resources, for example fishmeal, soymeal and other oilseed meals should be conducted.
7. Some insects (e.g. black soldier fly larvae, housefly maggot meal, mealworm, silkworm) are good in accumulating lipids/oils. Use of these oils for biofuel production and use of the defatted meal as animal feed would enhance the economic returns from the insect mass rearing establishments. Also some insects are rich in chitin, which could also have many attractive uses.
8. Sound data must be generated on feed conversion efficiency of various insects and use of water and substrate per unit of insect biomass and insect protein production, to make informed decisions on the environmental impacts of using insects or insect meals vis-à-vis other conventional feed resources.
9. Insects could also be a source of high value bioactive compounds, which should be researched. Presence of substances with immunostimulatory effects on other animals (Ido et al., 2014; Miura et al., 2014) and anti-microbial peptides (Elhaget al., 2014) have been reported recently."
Makkar et.al. State-of-the-art on use of insects as animal feed Animal Feed Science and Technology 197 (2014) 1–33