Issues with Current Broiler Starter Diet

A

Poultry feed refers to the food for farm poultry that most commonly includes ducks, chicken, geese, fowl, pigeon, turkey and other domestic birds. Although most poultry used to forage for their feed by eating insects and the grains that were spilled around by horses and cattle, their diet lacked adequate nutrients. Thus, the concept of broiler feed is widely relevant that encompasses supplementation of feed with grains and essential nutrients. Unlike feeds that are prepared for ruminants, broiler feeds are generally complete and are enriched with essential nutrients that help in meeting the daily requirements of the birds, apart from water intake. Typical composition of an accurate broiler starter feed includes wheat, sorghum, maize, pollard and bran (Ravindran 2013). It also contains protein rich meals such as, canola, soybean, and sunflower, in addition to limestone, vegetable oil, sodium bicarbonate, choline chloride, amino acids, antibiotics, vitamins and minerals. Such poultry feeds are usually given in the form of pellets, mash or crumbles.

Broiler poultry birds are usually raised for meat and egg production on a commercial scale. These birds have a good ratio of converting feed to meat, thereby transforming it in a small span of time. Therefore, it is essential to maintain a good quality feeding for a profitable farming business. Research evidences state that broilers require huge amount of protein in their food that will provide them adequate energy (Petracci et al. 2015). However, the quantity and nutritional requirements of the feed depend on the age and weigh of poultry, rate of growth, egg production and nutrient amount obtained from foraging (Willems, Miller and Wood 2013). This assignment will evaluate the provided broiler feed chart and will identify issues in the present diet.

The 5 issues identified in the broiler starter diet are as follows:

• Normal levels of calcium in broiler starter feed are of the range 1.0-1.50%. However, an analysis of the provided diet chart indicates that the feed is supplemented with high amount of calcium. This might create several problems in the birds. Usually, beneficial effects of a feed supplemented with calcium are attained only when it contains the recommended doses (Han et al. 2012). Excess concentration of dietary calcium in the feed will result in the development of metabolic disorders, such as, urolithiasis, diuresis, poor pullet performance, and visceral gout. Poor pullet performance might contribute to production of small eggs, sharp reduction in egg production and sudden infertility. Excess use of limestone will result in kidney lesions. Thus, there is a need to administer appropriate dose of calcium in the diet (Proszkowiec-Weglarz and Angel 2013).
• A broiler starter should fed with 20-23% crude protein and should be given a feed that provides approximately 3,000 kcal ME/kg energy from birth till 6 weeks of age (Abbasi et al. 2014). Growth of the broiler and efficiency of the feed use will improve upon use of mini-pellets or crumbs in the form of starter feed. Broiler chickens have been found to traditionally feed on diets that are relatively high in their energy content. This can be attributed to the fact that greater amount of energy not only promotes efficient utilization of the feed but also plays an important role in maximizing rate of growth among the broilers (Collett 2012). In the case scenario, an evaluation of the starter feed chart indicates that the broilers are being administered a feed that is unable to provide them adequate amount of energy. Therefore, it is essential to design the starter feed in a way that will be rich in its energy content. Low amount of energy in the starter diet will often make it difficult to gain appropriate energy and maintain the body weight. Thus, there is a need to supplement the diet with high energy feed that will contain balanced amount of protein and help in maximizing weight gain (Aguilar et al. 2013).
• The diet does not show presence of vitamins in the feed. Although vitamins and trace minerals do not contribute much to the overall feed cost, they are imperative in maintaining the metabolic functions of broilers. Growing chickens are most commonly found to interchangeably use betaune with choline owing to the function related to methylation. Furthermore, vitamin B12 has also been found to reduce requirement of choline in the diet of a broiler. Vitamin A, D3, E and B12 should be present in broiler starter feed in proportion of 7.0MIU, 2.0MIU, 6.0TIU, and 10.0mg, respectively (Rengaraj and Hong 2015). On the other hand, vitamin D2 is found to exhibit low activity for poultry. Absence of vitamins from the diet may contribute to a range of symptoms such as, decreased egg production, thin shelled eggs, retarded growth, enlarged hocks, intramuscular bleeding and poor feathering (Garcia et al. 2013). Thus, the diet should have contained adequate amounts of vitamins as well.
• Lack of antibiotics and antiprotozoal agents. Antibiotics are generally added to poultry feed owing to their anti-microbial action. They act as essential growth promoting agents by destroying several harmful bacteria that stays in the gut of the poultry birds. Furthermore, supplementation of broiler starter diet with appropriate antibiotics often results in faster conversion of the feed to muscle, thereby facilitating rapid growth. The major benefits also include increasing efficiency and reducing the risk of infectious disease (Khan et al. 2012). Use of penicillin and tetracycline in broiler starter feed has shown substantial improvements in hatchability and egg production. Absence of adequate antibiotics in the chart provided would increase susceptibility of the broilers to production of eggs that are of a poor quality. Furthermore, coccidiosis is a parasitic disease that commonly affects all poultry birds. It occurs due to coccidia infestation in the intestines. Supplementation of the feed with antiprotozoal agent coccidiostat will help in controlling infestation of several worms such as, tapeworm, roundworm and capillary worms (Bienenmann-Ploum et al. 2012). Thus, there is a need to add products such as hygromycin B in the feed.
• Generally much of phosphate remains unavailable to poultry due to its bound state with phytate. This results in excretion of excess phosphate and an oversupply in manure. Owing to this fact phytase enzyme is commonly added as a supplement to poultry feed in order to bind to P and facilitate release of nutrients and their absorption. However, in this case, there are adequate amounts of phosphate available to the bird (Tahir et al. 2012). Excess phytase often disrupts protein digestion by reducing the activity of trypsin, pepsin and aminopeptidase. Thus, addition of phytase in excess amounts not only acts as an unavailable source for phosphorus, but also plays the role of a major anti-nutrient (Walk et al. 2013). This will reduce the absorption of minerals and proteins from the feed and will reduce overall performance of the broilers.

B

Owing to the lack of some ingredients in the broiler feed formulation there is a need to formulate an effective diet plan for broiler starters. The plan mentioned below will help in maximizing growth, improving egg and meat production, thereby increasing their commercial value.

Figure 1- UNEForm table showing original feed formulation and composition

The UNEForm table given above shows the changes that had been made in the broiler starter feed formula. The new feed formula will provide more amount of metabolic energy, crude fat, lysine, and methionine, thereby directly enhancing the quality of eggs and meat. This will improve the commercial value of the broilers.

Proposed Broiler Starter Feed Formula

Figure 2- Feed formulation after least cost formulation

References

Abbasi, M.A., Mahdavi, A.H., Samie, A.H. and Jahanian, R., 2014. Effects of different levels of dietary crude protein and threonine on performance, humoral immune responses and intestinal morphology of broiler chicks. Revista Brasileira de Ciência Avícola, 16(1), pp.35-44.

Aguilar, Y.M., Becerra, J.C., Bertot, R.R., Peláez, J.C., Liu, G. and Hurtado, C.B., 2013. Growth performance, carcass traits and lipid profile of broiler chicks fed with an exogenous emulsifier and increasing levels of energy provided by palm oil. Journal of Food, Agriculture & Environment, 11(1), pp.629-633.

Bienenmann-Ploum, M.E., Huet, A.C., Campbell, K., Fodey, T.L., Vincent, U., Haasnoot, W., Delahaut, P., Elliott, C.T. and Nielen, M.W., 2012. Development of a five-plex flow cytometric immunoassay for the simultaneous detection of six coccidiostats in feed and eggs. Analytical and bioanalytical chemistry, 404(5), pp.1361-1373.

Collett, S.R., 2012. Nutrition and wet litter problems in poultry. Animal feed science and technology, 173(1-2), pp.65-75.

Garcia, A.F.Q.M., Murakami, A.E., do Amaral Duarte, C.R., Rojas, I.C.O., Picoli, K.P. and Puzotti, M.M., 2013. Use of vitamin D3 and its metabolites in broiler chicken feed on performance, bone parameters and meat quality. Asian-Australasian journal of animal sciences, 26(3), p.408.

Han, J., Liu, Y., Yao, J., Wang, J., Qu, H., Yan, Y., Yue, J., Ding, J., Shi, Z. and Dong, X., 2012. Dietary calcium levels reduce the efficacy of one alpha-hydroxycholecalciferol in phosphorus-deficient diets of broilers. The Journal of Poultry Science, 49(1), pp.34-38.

Khan, R.U., Naz, S., Nikousefat, Z., Tufarelli, V. and Laudadio, V., 2012. Thymus vulgaris: alternative to antibiotics in poultry feed. World’s Poultry Science Journal, 68(3), pp.401-408.

Petracci, M., Mudalal, S., Soglia, F. and Cavani, C., 2015. Meat quality in fast-growing broiler chickens. World’s Poultry Science Journal, 71(2), pp.363-374.

Proszkowiec-Weglarz, M. and Angel, R., 2013. Calcium and phosphorus metabolism in broilers: Effect of homeostatic mechanism on calcium and phosphorus digestibility1. Journal of Applied Poultry Research, 22(3), pp.609-627.

Ravindran, V., 2013. Poultry feed availability and nutrition in developing countries. Poultry development review, pp.60-63. Retrieved from- https://www.fao.org/3/a-i3531e.pdf#page=66

Rengaraj, D. and Hong, Y.H., 2015. Effects of dietary vitamin E on fertility functions in poultry species. International journal of molecular sciences, 16(5), pp.9910-9921.

Tahir, M., Shim, M.Y., Ward, N.E., Smith, C., Foster, E., Guney, A.C. and Pesti, G.M., 2012. Phytate and other nutrient components of feed ingredients for poultry. Poultry science, 91(4), pp.928-935.

Walk, C.L., Bedford, M.R., Santos, T.S., Paiva, D., Bradley, J.R., Wladecki, H., Honaker, C. and McElroy, A.P., 2013. Extra-phosphoric effects of superdoses of a novel microbial phytase. Poultry Science, 92(3), pp.719-725.

Willems, O.W., Miller, S.P. and Wood, B.J., 2013. Aspects of selection for feed efficiency in meat producing poultry. World’s Poultry Science Journal, 69(1), pp.77-88.