Nutrition issues challenge broiler performance

Feed quality has become a formidable obstacle to achieving broiler performance goals, according to poultry nutritionists and consultants.

“Our greatest challenge is ingredient quality,” says Dr. Tom Frost, director of nutrition and research, Wayne Farms, Oakwood, Georgia.

“We continue to receive increased pressure to use more and more byproduct ingredients, yet the quality of those ingredients continues to go down.”

Poultry meal is a prime example. With more of it being diverted to the pet food industry, the meal that’s left is far from the quality it was before, and the same holds true for meat- and bone-meal blends and fat. “The rendering situation — it’s a challenge,” he says.

Another example is distillers’ dried grains (DDG). It hit the industry as a prime ingredient, but the ingredients and fat content need scrutiny. “This, too, needs to be stabilized,” adds Frost, who shared his views with other poultry nutritionists who came together for a roundtable discussion, “Feeding Broilers for Optimum Health, Performance and Profitability.” The event was sponsored by Intervet/Schering-Plough Animal Health.

DDG MARKET ‘IMMATURE’

Bill Johnson, senior nutritionist with Tyson Foods, Magee, Mississippi, says that one disadvantage to the new DDG market is that it’s very immature and doesn’t yet have well-established trading rules. Much DDG is traded through brokers and resellers, not by direct sale from the producers.

Strong agreement came from Dr. Paul Twining, independent poultry consultant, Princess Anne, Maryland. A primary obstacle is determining the nutrient value for ingredients coming into the feed mill, and as for DDG, “you’ve got to have information going clear back to the production plant…there can be a tremendous difference between DDG from plant A versus plant B.

“Personally, I won’t buy DDG on the open market, through a broker. I want to know exactly the plant of origin. It’s the same with bakery meal,” he says.

Dr. Shivaram Rao, director of nutrition and feed mills for Foster Farms, Livingston, California, thinks it takes a lot of homework when alternative ingredients such as DDG are brought in.

“We’ve got to make sure that we know the consistency and digestibility of the product so that we are not altering the amino acid balance or the calorie-to-protein ratio in the finished feed,” he says.

Current lab techniques are an added frustration, Rao adds, because results come back late. By the time moisture or protein changes are detected, the birds have already eaten that feed, he says.

Dr. Robert Teeter, professor of animal science, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, says that the calorie and protein package — as well as coccidiosis control — are “extremely important” to broiler performance, but so are other aspects of the managerial environment that have a calorific cost. Lighting programs today, for instance, are saving energy on the order of about 100 kcals per kilogram. Pellet quality is another managerial factor that will increase the effective caloric value of rations.

ADDITIONAL COMPLICATIONS

Several other factors complicate the job of the poultry nutritionist, roundtable participants said.

One is extreme variability in corn quality, depending on where it was grown. “We’ve seen considerable differences in mycotoxin levels in the corn,” Twining says. “And there may be some fairly extreme differences in the caloric content of corn that’s not showing up in our standard approximate analysis.”

Weather as well as housing conditions can pose additional problems that hinder broiler performance goals. “We have to make sure that the growers are on our program,” he adds.

Dr. Mike Blair, nutritionist, Pilgrim’s Pride, Woodstock, Georgia, pointed to feed mills as a limiting factor in poultry nutrition. Bin space, especially with older mills, is a challenge and another is getting people to pay attention to how they’re feeding the birds. Good communication with live service techs is imperative, he says.

Looming restrictions on in-feed antibiotics is another significant challenge facing poultry nutritionists.

Although the antibiotic-free market isn’t here now, Rao says it’s well on the way. “In a year or two, it’s going to come,” he predicts. “I’m concerned that we be prepared for that — that we be a source of antibiotic-free poultry.”

Rao adds: “I’m kind of excited about vaccines as an alternative to some in-feed antibiotics. They’re something we need to keep improving on and maybe they will give us some answers.”

LESSONS FROM ANTIBIOTIC-FREE FLOCKS

The participants acknowledged there have already been lessons learned from antibiotic-free birds that they’ve applied to conventional flocks.

According to Twining, one lesson is that better husbandry results in fewer problems. “We’ve seen lower bird density in the antibiotic-free programs, and we’re using some fairly high levels of probiotics in place of an antibiotic,” he says. “All of these things are expensive in a large-scale production system, so it comes back to a specialty-type program where we have to have a premium to make it economical.”

At Foster Farms, some management strategies from its antibiotic-free/organic program have been applied to the conventional flocks. “Mainly it’s the fat quality,” Rao insists. “In our antibiotic-free/organic program, we use high-quality soybean oil and the performance is better than in our conventional program. So now we have our own fat-blending facility. We have dramatically improved our fat quality.”

Foster Farms has also learned that it’s important to provide more space. Based on results from the antibiotic-free/organic program, “we were able to convince management to give us more space for the conventional birds,” Rao adds.

Intervet/Schering-Plough Animal Health has published a proceedings booklet summarizing key topics from this nutrition roundtable. To obtain a copy, contact your Intervet/Schering-Plough Animal Health representative. Click here for an audio version of the complete discussion.