Agriculture in Zambia 10: The first part of the chapter on feed of what hopefully soon shall be the smart guide for broiler rearing in Zambia. This issue mostly is about factory stock feed. Its sequel is about home made feed.
Text by: Bert Witkamp
Chapter 5 BROILER FEED
The cost of feed is by far the largest single cost in rearing confined broilers. Feed
management and the quality of feed are also major factors in success or failure
in broiler rearing. An underfed chicken is underweight and perhaps unhealthy; a
wrongly fed chicken may get or be sick, taste poorly and be harmful to
the health of the consumer.
5.1 Sorts of Feed
Broilers, in principle, have access to three kinds of food:
i.
Natural food such as insects, seeds and leaves.
ii.
Factory made stock feed.
iii.
Homemade stock feed.
Stock feed is made in three different varieties: starter, grower and
finisher. Each of these varieties is formulated according to changing nutrient
needs during the fast forward sort of live of the broiler.
Natural Food
Option 1, natural food, is only substantially available to free range
chickens, or chickens kept in a movable coop. The chickens forage this food and
it therefore is an activity engaging the muscular system, instinct and senses
of the broiler. The foraged food is supplemented by regular stock feed; either
factory or home made.
Broilers from different hatcheries or
batches have considerable variety in appetite for natural greens by broilers –
some hatcheries produce chicks that have hardly any interest in fresh
vegetation and others do. You can try to supplement confined broilers with
greens – they might pick any green including grass. Cabbage leaves and all
sorts of indigenous wild vegetables are eaten by some with great enthusiasm.
You thus provide variety to the menu as well as fresh, natural nutrients. Older
birds are likely to also consume surplus or damaged fruits from the garden such
as guava’s, banana’s or avocados. Just throw some in the house or yard and see
if the broilers go for it or not.
Commercial
stock feed
Most backyard farmers use industrially produced stock feed and so do
many small scale farmers. Commercial feed is made by specialised stock feed
producers, such as National Milling, Tiger Feeds, Nutrifeed, Novatek, Choma
Milling, Yielding Tree and others. Broiler stock feed is a sophisticated
product formulated to deliver you a 1.6 to 2+ kg dressed weight broiler in six
to seven weeks time. Examples of such feed formula’s are in the 2007 Livestock
Services publication – including some medical additives common in industrial
production. Stock feed producers are guided by the following basic principles:
- Availability of raw materials and other ingredients.
- Cost of raw materials and other ingredients.
- Quality of raw materials and other ingredients.
- Combination of ingredients such that maximum weight gain is achieved in the shortest period of time.
- Good Food – Weight Conversion (FCR) ratio (meaning maximum conversion of feed into bodily weight gain).
- Carcass characteristics (e.g. meat quality, fattiness, colour).
- Cost effectiveness of production.
- Competitive production (effects mostly price but also reflects consumer satisfaction).
- Market availability and demand.
- Profitability.
- Legal regulation and standardisation within the industry.
Stock feed production
practically is a trade off between various factors so as to arrive at a product
that is competitively priced, does its job of delivering a weighty chicken in a
short time without too many chicks falling by the wayside and that yields
profit for the owners of the plant.
Factory stock feed producers do
not provide you with the details of feed composition and you therefore do not
know the composition of the main ingredients and of the additives. The main
ingredients in Zambia invariably are maize and soya products, together
accounting by weight for 75 to 85% of feed composition. Other natural organic
ingredients in factory feed are or might be sunflower or sunflower cake, fish
meal, bone meal, blood meal and meat meal. Commercial feed contains a small
amount of a synthetic (that is, factory made) essential amino acid called
methionine if it is insufficiently present in the natural feed components. Feed
also contains small amounts of minerals: salt and possibly ground limestone
and/or calcium phosphate. The additives are a package of substances which act
like boosters or growth enhancers. These are or might be medical substances
(antibiotics and coccidiostats), trace minerals, and hormones or enzymes that
enhance food-weight conversion ratio’s (meaning these hormones or enzymes make
your chicks gain more weight using the same amount of feed) and growths
stimulants such as vitamins. Of these additives the minerals and vitamins may
be classified as “normal” food supplements, enzymes appear to be harmless and
hormones should be banned.
The permanent addition of
antibiotics and coccidiostats is considered necessary in the industrial
production of broilers to reduce risks of loss by disease. The same applies to
small scale broiler rearing and in part serves to make up for poor management
practices. The preventive administration of certain antibiotics also is supposed
to improve the feed-weight conversion ratio. Hormones affecting food conversion
are or might be added because of the economic motive to save money on feed and
to keep the rearing period as short as possible. The use of these hormones in
broiler feed is forbidden in the Western world and its effectiveness in better
broiler food-weight conversion rates is disputed.
Commercial stock feed may
include “slaughter waste” such as ground up bones (bone meal), meat meal or
blood meal. Bone meal (mostly from slaughtered cows) must be sterilized before
usage as an ingredient in feed. Blood meal is dried, processed and powdered blood,
also usually from slaughtered cows. It is not allowed in the West to feed blood
meal to broilers that are to be organically raised.
Note that all pesticides (i.e.,
insecticides, fungicides and herbicides) present in stock feed ingredients shall
be consumed by the chicken and possibly ultimately by the human consumer at the
end of the food chain. Feed may also contain fungicides to prevent mold in
storage. Imported soya or maize or their products used for feed may be of the
GMO variety. Presently in Zambia it is forbidden to grow GMO maize or soya, but
not in the Republic of South Africa.
Check the manufacturing date when
you buy feed – feed should be fresh.
By far most broiler farmers
have no option but to feed their broilers on industrially produced stock feed.
And indeed, that option has major advantages. The feed is ready-made available
in the shops and offers a balanced diet. The main disadvantage is that you
don’t know what you are feeding your broilers particularly concerning insecticides,
herbicides, fungicides, food preservatives, medication, growth promoters, slaughter
waste, bacterial contamination and possibly GMO products.
You can and should feed your broilers at least during
ten days before slaughter on so-called Withdrawal Finisher (that is finisher
without pharmaceuticals) or any regular finisher that is guaranteed free of
pharmaceuticals. You need to check this with your stock feed supplier. You
should not routinely add vitamins and medication to the feed as these are
already in the feed. Only provide extra vitamins at arrival, during
vaccinations or when broilers are sick. Provide medication only when birds are
sick after having been advised by a professional.
There is no point in preparing your own feed or
purchasing homemade brands unless this can be done professionally using quality
ingredients. Stick to commercial feed till you have a good, ecologically sound
do-it-yourself alternative.
Starter,
grower and finisher.
Broiler feed is composed of
starter, grower and finisher varieties. These varieties correspond to changing
nutritional needs of the growing broiler and in particular concern the
protein – energy ratio of the feed and possibly the sources of the protein. The
broiler, as a day old chick, needs much protein for body building and little
energy for body energy. After six weeks the situation is the opposite: by the
time the broiler is ready for the market it utilises most of its feed intake
for energy and a small portion for growth. Data below are from the 2007 Ross
manual and apply to the 6 – 7 week “heavy broiler” schedule.
Starter
|
Grower
|
Finisher
|
|
Days
|
1 -10
|
11 - 24
|
15 -
slaughter
|
Crude protein %
|
22 -25
|
21 -23
|
19 - 23
|
Digestible protein %
|
17.7
|
17.7
|
Min. 14.2
|
Energy in kcal
|
3025
|
3150
|
3200
|
Table 1: Protein and energy requirements for 2
to 2.5 kg broiler.
Crude protein (CP) is protein
as in the source (such as soya meal) and digestible protein (DP) is protein that
the broiler actually can absorb. Meeting the protein requirement is a major
problem for stock feed manufacturers and this is reflected in the actual
protein content of the feed. This generally is lower than the recommended
percentages stated above; reason is the cost of suitable protein rich
ingredients.
Adhere to the predescribed order of broiler feed: first starter, then
grower and lastly finisher. The number
of days for each of these feeds depends on:
1. Actual feed
composition of the feed you use (check the tag for the protein %, the stated %
refers to crude protein) and
2. The kind of
chicken you want to grow and thereby the rearing period.
The schedule of table 1 above is based on an optimum protein diet.
Practically the protein content of many brands is less - meaning that the
number of days on starter feed shall be more than 10 days. Nutri Feed Starter,
for example, contains 20% CP and you are advised by their current flyer to give
starter for 18 days, followed by 10 days of grower after which you feed
finisher till sale or slaughter. You should therefore read information leaflets
of your stock feed supplier so as to establish the best feeding regime for your
broilers.
Finisher
and finisher
Finisher differs not only from
starter and grower in CP %, it also is or should be different as far as
ingredients are concerned. Finisher should not contain fish meal as it imparts a
fishy taste to the meat. It is better if finisher does not include slaughter
waste products, blood and meat meal in particular. You need to give at least
ten days of finisher to flush out any pharmaceuticals that have been added to the
feed; this pharmaceutical free finisher is referred to as “withdrawal
finisher.” Some companies, however, manufacture finisher without
pharmaceuticals and still label their finisher just plainly finisher. Other
companies produce finisher labelled finisher that contains pharmaceuticals
including antibiotics. Some companies produce a special pharmaceutical free
finisher called withdrawal finisher – implying that their regular finisher does
include these substances.
You
need to know what the pharmaceutical status of your finisher is and ensure that
your broilers are fed pharmaceutical free feed for at least ten days before
slaughter. Failure to do so means that you are putting your clients
involuntarily on a diet of antibiotics and possibly other harmful medicine. In that
event you shall also be contributing to the increasingly serious problem of
bacterial resistance against antibiotic treatment in human beings.
Stock
Feed Concentrate.
Stock Feed
concentrate is regular feed without maize products. When you mix concentrate
with coarsely ground maize (“masembe”) in the proportion of 1 concentrate to 2
maize you get regular feed. It saves money especially if you can buy the maize
cheaply at the beginning of the harvesting season or if you grow the maize
yourself. Masembe is the coarsest particle size the hammer mill can grind.
Chicken feed should not be powdery. Masembe sometimes is used to feed chicks
upon arrival as some feeds give the chicks digestive problems when they start
eating.
Manufactured
feed plus extra maize or other supplement
Many broiler farmers are in the habit of diluting (“reducing the density
of”) factory feed with third grade mealie meal (“sweepings”) or maize bran.
Generally it is better not to tamper with starter and grower feed – unless of
course you have run out of money and cannot afford the feed. After all diluted
feed is better than no feed, but weight gain inevitably shall be retarded. Less
harmful is to add third grade maize or coarsely ground maize to finisher,
especially if your birds already have the desired weight and you are just
waiting for a buyer. At that stage you can also add sunflower and processed
soya – see also below under homemade feed.
Homemade
feed.
The third feeding option is to make
your own feed by mixing ingredients that you have purchased or have cultivated.
This option is discussed in the sequel to this text.
