Livestock Feed Formulation: 3 Things You Should Know
Nutrition plays an essential role in improving the performance of livestock. Many farmers are concerned with meeting the nutritional needs of their animals with available ingredients to obtain optimum yield and profit.
Basic Factors to Consider in Feed Formulation
Feed formulation is the process of constructing a feed or diet formula for animals. When formulating livestock feed, the fundamental things to consider are;
Nutrient Requirement of the Animal.
Availability of the Feed Ingredients.
Learn MoreCost of Feed Production.
Nutrient Requirement of the Animal
In formulating feed, it is essential to consider the nutrient requirement of your livestock. That is the class of animals such as broilers, layers, turkey, fish or others. Why do they need the nutrients? How much of these nutrients does a healthy diet require? How will the body of the animals utilize these nutrients for growth and maintenance?
The nutrient requirement of various categories of livestock differs. For example, to formulate feed for broilers, their nutrient requirement differs from turkey. Also, as the animals grow, their nutrient requirement differs.
For instance, in formulating feed for broiler starter, from day-old to 3 weeks, their nutrient requirement differs from those of 3 to 6 weeks and above. With the feed ingredients at your disposal, you have to decide to meet the nutritional requirement of the animals so that you will not formulate a diet that will fail to meet the nutrient requirement of the animals.
Read also: How to make Probiotics for your flock
Livestock Feed Available Here
Also, taking cognizant of the digestibility of the nutrients to be supplied in a feed formula is vital to avoid overloading the animals with these nutrients. Of course, the animals need protein, they need amino acids, but what quantity of these do they need? You must supply them the exact nutrient they will need.
About forty specific nutrients need to be present in the diet to support life and for growth and optimum production. These are energy, as well as 13 essential amino acid, vitamins, essential minerals and fatty acids. In addition to these nutrients, you need to make sure that whatever feed ingredient that you have at your disposal can meet the needs of the animals.
Availability of feed ingredients
Apart from the nutrient requirement of animals and the digestibility of the nutrient by the animals, the feed ingredients at your disposal also determine your feed formula. The whole essence of nutrition is to define the nutrient animals require to perform at a certain level, then you need to identify the feed ingredient that will supply the nutrient.
Read also: 7 qualities of successful livestock farmers
Not all available feed ingredient can be used because though they may contain the nutrient quite all alright, but the nutrients may not be readily available. You need to identify a suitable source of those nutrients and match these two in a diet formulation to obtain a balanced diet.
Balanced animal diets are composed of feed ingredients whose components can be digested and absorbed by the animals so that the nutrient they contain can be useful. There is no point giving blood meal or feather meal that is very high in protein content when your animals cannot absorb them.
Therefore, it is important to know the nutrient required by the animals and the feed ingredients e.g. maize for energy, soybean meal or GNC for protein, or, wheat offal or corn bran for fibre.
That variability of having different ingredients at your disposal that you can play around with is what makes feed formulation interesting.
That is, what you feed your animal with for this week might not be what you give them the following week. You may decide to increase the weight of your animals by changing their diet and then you get an excellent result.
Once you know these things, you are on the proper track for feed formulation. That is, when you know the nutrient requirement, identify feed ingredient that you have and cost implication, then you can start your feed formulation.
Cost of Feed Production
When formulating feed, there is a need to take note of the cost. To ensure profitability, the cost of the feed formulation must not be on the high side.
Research has shown that about 70% of the total cost in livestock production is feed.
So, when you are formulating your feed, you have to decide that the formula you are choosing and the required ingredients you are using are supplied economically. Also, note that in considering cost, it should not be at the detriment of the animals. That is if you are trying to minimize cost, the quality of the feed should not be compromised. You have to be economical, but not to the detriment of the animals.
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