NUTRITIONAL CONCEPTS

TARGETED FEED ENZYMES

Enzyme Applications in Animal Feed is the most significant animal production efficiency improvement technology in over 2 decades.

Technological breakthroughs have led to economical production and use of purified enzymes, allowing targeted formulation of enzyme/s combinations specifically designed to digest known fibers of individual ingredients and corn-soy rations in a quantifiable, measureable and visible effect.

Targeted Enzyme impact is characterized by

  1. marked feed digestibility improvement (30% – 70%)
  2. significant reduction of direct feed costs and feed/gain costs (7% – 11%) , and
  3. the all important reduction in manure and effluent emissions (up to 35%)
    in easily computable, readily verifiable, and repeatable results, with reduction in manure size and volume visible the next day.

The technology is particularly attractive to major feed importing countries, as it allows maximized utilization of locally available, and cheaper, agricultural byproduct ingredients (copra meal, palm kernel meal, rice bran, etc.) , without the usual negative performance effects typical in high byproduct incorporation, and at similar, or better, performance results as/better than corn-soy.

The Cost and Effect ratio (enzyme treatment cost against computable improvements) is better than 1:5.

Enzymes, being biological materials, must be technically and appropriately understood in order for their feed applications to be effectively formulated and implemented.

MINERAL AMINO ACID CHELATES

Recent findings have established that inorganic mineral supplements may not be as absorbable as expected and tend to cause undesirable interactions in the digestive system:
  • Inorganic minerals start precipitating at pH 5; more than 85% of inorganic minerals fed form precipitates at the intestinal pH of 7 and above; average absorbability is <15%.
  • Interaction with

LOW HEAT PROCESSED, HIGH BIOLOGIC VALUE ANIMAL PROTEINS

In proteins, there exists a wide disparity between what is analyzable (CP, Pepsin Digestibility) and what is bioavailable (the percentage of protein intake that is used by the animal for protein accretion) Heat processing, the standard method of preserving animal proteins for animal feed use, is well understood to induce protein denaturation and consequent loss of protein bioavailability. The standard rendered meat and bone meal, for example, is recorded at 65% to 85% denatured. The level of protein denaturation is proportional to the temperature and length of exposure. The biologic value of plant proteins has also been established to be only at 30% to 40%, with 60% to 70% of the total protein intake unused/excreted with the manure/urine. Low heat processing dramatically reduces both the temperature and time exposure of animal proteins, leading to maximized preservation of inherent protein bioavailability. Processes such as spray dry, high pressure extrusion, ultracentrifugation and ultrafiltration, among others, have allowed production of meals with drastically minimized protein denaturation (less than 20% depending on the process). For example, rendered blood meal has less than 20% protein bioavailability, while spray dried blood meal will have more than 85% protein bioavailability. Definitely, low heat processed meals are more costly than rendered ones, but markedly higher protein bioavailability more than makes up for the higher cost, leading to lower cost/gram of protein actually used as protein. The FAO has recently declared that traditional CP and Pepsin Digestibility determinations are poor indicators of true protein values and recommended the use of