Huvepharma nutritional services have analysed raw materials and complete feed with a large client in East Africa since spring 2021.
In the summer of 2022, broiler diets were renovated completely to improve the cost of production. Optimised feeds were nutritionally richer yet less costly than the original diets, containing more metabolisable energy and digestible lysine, less calcium and more available phosphorus (P). Reformulation was facilitated by Huvepharma's digestibility enhancers Hostazym® X (a fibre-degrading enzyme) and OptiPhos® Plus (a phytate-degrading enzyme).
To compare bird performance when fed the old feed formulation versus the renovated feed formulation, a pen trial was done first (in August 2022), followed by two larger field trials (October - December 2022). To make a professional comparison of bird health and performance, Aviapp was used. The renovated feeds outperformed the old feed formulation on total production cost and performance index. All of this was calculated while also recording, centralising and analysing factors in the client's Aviapp account including parent age, stocking density, season and temperature to objectively assess results.
In summary, Huvepharma helped increase the transparency of the entire broiler operation through:
- Nutritional discussions - Huvepharma nutritional services and analysis of raw materials and feeds helped the customer gain insights using current field evidence to optimise future diets.
- Health assessments - Aviapp was set up for the client enabling reporting on various parameters including performance (recordings of variable parameters such as daily growth), health (including necropsy around week 3 of age) and environment.
Figure 1 illustrates the achieved production improvement.
Table 1 summarises the improvements in feed conversion rate (FCR), average daily gain (ADG) and European Production Efficiency Factor (EPEF, an equation based on average daily weight gain, mortality and feed conversion) when birds were fed the renovated diets versus the historical or trial diets. The Huvepharma diets tended to improve EPEF (+ 5 points) and FCR (- 4 points) compared to the client trial diet (not significant due to small sample size).
To quote our client:
"Huvepharma has been able to tackle current nutritional challenges head-on with exceptional results. The combination of using Huvepharma nutritional products and software-based applications such as Aviapp while also digging into our feed formulations and better understanding our field performance has been hugely beneficial. Huvepharma also liaised professionally with other companies and nutritionists, looked at costings, sampled feed and interpreted these results in a simple way. Our team has implemented a dietary strategy from these evaluations that not only improves our field performance but also reduces our overall feed costs. Having presence and assistance from Huvepharma in our company through this time has been invaluable and will allow us to further improve our operation, profitability and the poultry products we supply to the market in the future."
