Boosting feed utilisation in laying hens With Mark McFarland, Lallemand Animal Nutrition
As a basic poultry feed ration reached a five-year price high last year, many layer producers will be considering ways to make their feed go further by looking at energy utilisation. We spoke to Mark McFarland, feed additive product manager at Lallemand Animal Nutrition, to find out more.
Why have prices increased so dramatically? Weather challenges in both the UK and South America have had a significant impact on the two most common ingredients in poultry feed: soya and wheat. As UK wheat continues to be in tight supply, it’s unlikely that the price will drop until the 2021 harvest begins. South America experienced tricky weather conditions during
planting and harvest, meaning their harvest was delayed slightly. In addition, China has increased their demand for soya in recent months, pushing up the price.
What can be done to improve feed utilisation? Although not a lot can be done to change the price of feed ingredients, there are things that can be put in place to help birds utilise more of the available dietary energy in the feed, helping to improve feed efficiency. Energy is a major driver of feed cost and a major consideration
when it comes to poultry feed formulation. Energy metabolism in laying hens needs to fulfil two types of needs: first to maintain the birds’ body physiological needs, the maintenance energy; and the remaining energy available for growth and egg production, the production energy. Attempts to reduce energy content can result in lower egg production
and quality as these performance parameters are widely influenced by dietary energy availability. In poultry diets, cereals represent 60 to 70% of feed formulation and are the largest contributor to energy requirements via carbohydrates. In poultry, it is estimated that between 5 and 30% of the total
energy requirement is provided by microbial fermentation in the gut. Simple carbohydrates like starch are digested enzymatically in the small intestine, producing most of the necessary energy. Non-starch polysaccharides (NSP), which cannot be digested by enzymes, pass through to the caecum, where the endogenous gut microbiota can produce short chain fatty acids (SCFA) via fermentation, as an additional energy source for the birds. Gut microbiota also influences enzymatic activity, protein and lipid
metabolism, and vitamin and mineral absorption. It has been shown that germ-free chickens display a lesser endogenous enzymatic activity compared to standard birds. One approach which can help laying hens extract more energy
from feed is dietary supplementation. Recent trials have demonstrated that adding a probiotic bacteria Pediococcus acidilactici CNCM I- 4622, known commercially as Bactocell, to poultry feed, positively affects feed efficiency and dietary energy utilisation. In the research, 200 31-week-old
PAGE 42 MARCH/APRIL 2021 FEED COMPOUNDER As shown in the results, we can also see that eggs from the
probiotic supplemented reduced energy diet group, showed similar eggshell thickness to eggs from the control standard energy diet (360 vs. 357μm); suggesting that Bactocell supplementation compensates for the energy dilution on performance. When looking solely at the Bactocell supplementation effect, regardless of dietary energy level, hens fed a Bactocell supplemented diet demonstrate better productive performance than hens without the unique probiotic bacteria (P<0.05). As well as this positive finding, regardless of dietary energy, birds
which were fed the probiotic supplemented diet demonstrated better productive performance than those without. There’s unfortunately no way to eke out poultry feed, if birds are
fed less or are placed on cheaper diets, you will pay for it through poorer performance. But by utilising tools which can help to improve feed efficiency, producers can take back some control of the most expensive element of egg production.
Hy Line Brown layers were split in to four groups. Each group was fed one of four different mash diets: standard energy, reduced energy, standard energy with the addition of probiotic bacteria, and reduced energy with the addition of probiotic bacteria. The birds had access to water ad lib, and all diets had equal amino acid and mineral specifications. Standard energy diets were formulated to contain 2,650 kcal with reduced diets containing 2,550 kcal. Bioequivalence was then used to evaluate the combined effect of the
reduced diet and the supplementation of Bactocell on bird performance. This concept is defined by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) as follows: if two products are said to be bioequivalent, it means that they would be expected to be, for all relevant effects, the same. Looking at the laying rate, FCR, exported egg mass and feed intake
a performance criteria, hens receiving Bactocell with a reduced energy diet, show bioequivalent performance to control hens fed the standard energy diet. The results indicated that adding this probiotic to the diet allows for
up to a 100 kcal/kg (0.4MJ/kg) reduction in feed energy, but with laying rate and eggshell thickness being maintained, as shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1: Effect of diet and probiotic supplementation on the performance of layers
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