feed mill experience

i found this on the poultry site . com

http://www.thepoultrysite.com/articles/989/reinvention-for-feed-formulation

i'm having a hard time understanding it and was hoping maybe someone could put it into laymens terms. thanks.

Re-Invention for Feed Formulation
By Jane Jordan, ThePigSite Editor. Livestock producers are struggling within the green revolution, but help may be at hand through biotechnology and nutrigenomics. Feed formulation needs an overhaul now that traditional ingredients are becoming scarce, expensive and routed to bio-fuels or the human food market.
Rising feed costs - a function of low world cereal stocks, increasing human consumption and the diversion of arable crops into more lucrative contracts for bio-fuel production - are crippling meat producers. On top of this, are massive pressures to improve efficiency, reduce pollution and lessen the carbon foot print from agriculture. It all adds astronomic costs to livestock production and in the western hemisphere the sector is threatened by collapse.
However, on a global scale, the situation does not stack up - the most efficient food producers are those located in the developed world. They are the ones best placed to meet the ever increasing worldwide demand for food because they have the technology and know how to meet the challenge.
Vicious Circles
The logic was questioned during Alltech's 22nd European Lecture Tour.

"In our quest to save the world, could we make more money from carbon credits than we can from raising livestock?" asked Alltech President Dr Pearse Lyons. "This is a vicious circle. The developing world has an increasing demand for meat, but where will it come from?"

He believes livestock production offers untapped opportunities and will have an integral role in fulfilling sustainable food production. It will take a pivotal role within all the rural communities so long as it learns to re-align its strategies and make full use of alternative resources - an area in which biotechnology had already made in-roads says Dr Lyons.

Using alternatives will be the only means of making a margin and the future meant releasing the potential of fibre - primarily the nutrients locked up in cellulose.

"Ration formulators must accept that the corn/soya based diet standard is now obsolete," said Dr Lyons. And he is confident that the feed industry will meet the challenge through innovation and science-led developments Alltech is already making headway here and has developed a solid fermentation process that can improve the quality and nutritive value of bio-fuel by-products.

It's an area that could benefit feed compounders who say they are increasingly concerned about access and the quality of bio-fuel by products, mainly DDGS. The company has also commissioned a new Nutrigenomics Research Facility, a first for the feed industry. The centre will research and investigate how nutritional factors influence genetic expression and will provide valuable information on how to 'fill in the gaps relating to current nutritional understanding.
And such developments will be the focus of its Feed Symposium to in Kentucky during April 2008.
Raw Concerns
At a recent meeting of Alltech's 'Presidents Club', the Directors of the World's leading animal feed companies discussed raw material sourcing. Every delegate said their primary concern was access to raw materials because they just could not get enough grain.
Alternative products, including DDGS, were becoming increasingly expensive and their inconsistent quality and lack of traceability presented manufacturing challenges and risks.

These factors were increasing costs and creating more volatility in what was an already unstable market.
Forging Forward
Alltech's six-year development of solid state fermentation in relation to feed formulation has proved successful. The process, which uses carefully selected strains of fungus capable of breaking down low energy agricultural by products, such as DDGS, allows a more flexible approach to fed formulation.

In trials with commercial broilers, diets that included SSF at 200g/tonne, produced an improvement in growth rate and FCR.

The investigations, using 1500 Hybro G birds, set up seven replicates - four male, three female. The birds were fed a corn-soy based diet and the ME was reduced by two, three and four per cent from the usual three diets used - a booster, grower and finishers - respectively. The birds were reared for 50 days under fairly extreme conditions (34 degrees C at 90 per relative humidity).

Adding SSF to the ration produced a 2.9 per cent improvement in body weight at finishing and a proportional reduction in FCR. Also interesting was the vast cut in mortality - a drop of more than 45 per cent.

These positive improvement in performance are supported by results in other trials. Broilers in this case were fed a lower-grade ration. Two diets were used.
Their constituents (%) before pelleting were:
• corn - 61 and 62.5
• full fat soya bean meal (SBM)- 5 and 7.5 ,
• de-hulled SBM - 20 and 14
• fish meal - 5.5 and 2.5
• maize gluten - 4 and 8
• oil - 2.5 and 2.4
• MCP - 1.1 and 1.0
• Limestone - 1.1 and 1.2
Total phosphorus was calculated at 0.7 per cent for the stage one diet and 0.61 per cent for the second stage diets

Results showed that compared with the farms previous crops the birds fed SSF enhanced diets were more efficient and had high daily growth rates. Average weight at sale (39 days) was 2.07kg with an FCR of 1.69. Birds in the previous batch, fed control specification diets, achieved 1.95kg liveweight with an 1.74 FCR.

Similar benefits can be expected in other livestock, says Alltech and investigations are underway.
Solid State Fermentation is a totally natural process. Click here to view research into SSF and its uses with agricultural products/ by-products.
 
It is basically an article about using distillers dried grains, a by-product of the ethanol industry, as a substitute for grains we are now using. These DDSs are being fermented with various yeasts and microbes to further boost the protein content. Does it work, yes. But why go through all the trouble to process the grain for ethanol, then reprocess it to make animal feed. It might be high in protein but with all the handling it will work out to be the same or more expensive. The places that are touting SSF produced feed additives are banking on ethanol being the next big fuel. Personally I don't see it. Farmers way overproduced corn this year banking on ethanol sales, but the US ethanol plants are pretty much maxed out. One of the reasons December and January futures tanked. Plus ethanol is not as hot a fuel as oil, way less bang for your buck. Far driving Americans will not like a 25-30% decrease in miles per gallon for a fuel that still costs over $2/gal. Soybeans will remain high as China is taking up the excess. The main moral of the story is "Never turn your food supply into a fuel supply." It just does not work.
 
ah, i understand now. i LURVE cliffnotes! thank you anthony. i read in the national arboretum newsletter how people have cut down their trees which they were getting paid by the government to grow, to start farming corn since corn was paying better. sigh.

michele
 
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Ya, CRP fields took a hit this year with the corn price hype. I read a good atricle about it in Progressive Farmer. As a wildlife biologist and environmental educator I hate to see it happen. Some good habitat getting turned under.
 
the feed mills don't have the fastrack probiotic or fertrell nutri-balancer.
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i can get the fastrack probiotic from valleyvet. i buy things for my horse there so thats fine and he said he'll mix it in there for me free or i can use something called amferm (sp?) which is a like the fastrack probiotic except that it's not live?? i think that's what he said.

and, i can't find the nutri-balancer. there a dealer out about 3 hours away so that would have to be shipped in.

another question. he asked me if corn meal would work. is that okay? or would that be non nutritious. i'm very ignorant about this so any help would be greatly appreciated.

i don't know if this is going to be cheaper. without the nutri-balancer, it comes out to $10.85 a 50 pound bag if i buy 40 bags. in the LONG run it would save me about $100. hmmmmmmm. i guess i need to see how much it would cost me to get the nutri-balancer.
 
I can get mine at the mill for $11 per 50 lbs, that's a savings of $5.40 per bag. They have a tote you can haul it home in and dump it into your cantainers.
 
There are not too many dealers for the Fertrells once you get out of the East it seems. I know you can order the nutribalancer from Cornerstone Farm Ventures. They have a good website, even has a few more ration formulas on it. I am not sure about the cornmeal. Seems that would make a pretty mealy ration. This stuff is mealy enough with the soybean meal, kelp, nutribalancer, and coarse ground corn. Maybe the corn meal is cheaper for some reason. I have seen it in many chicken feed rations that are very similar to the one I put up, so it should work. The price per 50 you got quoted is good. It would be about the same as what I am paying if you add in the nutribalancer. You might ask them if you keep getting your feed there might they stock some nutribalancer. The feed mill I deal with will get in special items to mix with if they know that they will be used.
 
found me some fertrell! yay!!

yeah, the feed looks pretty mealy. he thought i would want meal cuz everything else is meal. he said he can do cracked corn for the same cost. putting in the cost of the fertrell, it comes out to $11.75 per bag (20% protein) if i buy 40 bags. i called my feed store on the price of purina chick starter/grower as of today, and he said $15.95 a bag. so that's a savings of $4.20 a bag or $168. i think we got a winner.
 

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