Summer 2008

General News

Welcome to yet another new year.  At the time of writing ingredient and feed prices are still high, while the price of meat and eggs are not improving.  This unhappy state of affairs is likely to persist until the new crop comes in – although this is unlikely to do a lot to the high protein prices!  The world prices for vitamins continue to increase, with the price of Vitamin E having doubled in the past few months. Sadly, this all points to what could be another tough year.  We need to remember the importance of achieving high levels of technical efficiency in our production units, as this is the only option we really have to maintain profitability.

There have been a number of changes at SPESFEED over the past few months, all of which have had an impact on the way in which we will operate in future.

Avi-Products have had a warehouse in Gauteng for a number of years. We have decided to rationalise our operation, and have closed down this site.  Instead, we are using an Isando based courier to service our clients in Gauteng area.  It therefore makes sense a) for the Avi-Products sales office to be near the courier and b) to run a single office our two companies. For this reason, the SPESFEED office will be moving to new, shared premises in Isando.

We have rented offices in the DSM building at No 16 Brewery Road, Isando. For those of you who do not know Johannesburg , Isando is the industrial area that adjoins the OR Tambo Airport.  Sadly, the brewery after which the road was named has long since gone! Our new phone numbers are:

                Tel: 011 392 1019

                Fax: 011 392 1038

Another change is that Bianca will be leaving us after 7 years of loyal service.  She will be staying on in our old offices for a while, but working for my brother Russell and his partner Roger Graham at Afrisoft.  She will become part of their project management team. Project management is something that she really enjoys.  I am sure that you join us in wishing her well in her new role.

After a year of frenetic travel in 2007, I have decided to try to take charge of my own life.  I will endeavour to be in the office (or at least in Gauteng ) on Mondays and Fridays.  This is not always possible, as often the flights into some of the countries that I visit do not allow for this.

SPESFEED EXPRESS

The SPESFEED EXPRESS Feed formulation program continues to develop.  We have had many ideas from our users, some of which we have been able to put into the program.  Some of the newest improvements are:

In addition, there have been some systems improvements with general issues such as language selection in Windows, licensing issues and screen layouts.

Most importantly, the most up-to-date version of the software is posted on our website.  You will be able to download, as both a self-extracting and loading EXE file, or for those people with office firewalls as a ZIP file.  All that users are required to do is download the program files and load them onto your machine.

It is important to note that no data will be down loaded, so your existing data will remain unaffected.  As always, it is a good idea to make a backup before you update your software. 

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Ingredient Prices

Over the years (2003 and 2005), we have put together a summary of the ingredient prices over the past few years.  Here is an update for your interest.  You will note that without exception all of the prices shown are at record highs.  In the case of Wheat Bran, the December 2007 price is R1100.00 ton, but it need to be remembered that in October 2007 it was at R1800/ton.  All prices included in the table are Rand/Ton, at an estimated mill door price. 

Courses

The SPESFEED EXPRESS training session that we ran in our offices in November last year was most successful.  We will be running another course on Monday 7th of April at our offices in Isando.  Please contact me if you are interested in attending.

We plan to run the Poultry Nutrition Course from the 15th to 17th September.  Please diarise these dates. 

Science and Political Correctness

“There is nothing so tragic as a beautiful theory destroyed by an ugly fact”

 (Thomas Huxley, 1825-1895)

At the South Africa Large Herds Conference, held in Jeffery's Bay in February of last year, Roche and Edmeades presented a paper called "Fact or Fiction?  How do i know who's telling the truth".  The paper appeared in Grassroots (Vol 7. No 4), which is the newsletter of the Grassland Society of Southern Africa.  The article has stuck a cord with me, and I have taken the liberty of presenting some of the ideas included in it here.

Science is a tool.  It is a logical, objective process for testing ideas, and thereby reaching a conclusion.  The scientific process emerged out of the Dark Ages about 600 years ago when people began to challenge the authority of the church, and questioned the idea that the only truth was that which could be revealed through prayer.  Early scientists, including Copernicus and Galileo, brought about the Age of Enlightenment.

We have now entered what is referred to as the Age of Post-modernism.  Post-modernism is characterised by a philosophy of political correctness, which espouses that ll systems of thought, all cultures and all beliefs are of equal value.  To assume otherwise would be politically incorrect.  It suggest that there are multiple and valid "truths" and if you do not agree with the scientific truth,  you should find another subjective and possibly irrational truth to explain any outcome.  Facts do not always matter to the Post-modernist: whether it feels good to you, or whether you are in "touch" with yourself, may be all that is important.

Rigorous debate and openly challenging ideas and research findings are often deemed politically incorrect, thus depreciating the value of science.  Therefore, it is more important that people develop an understanding of the scientific process.

To tell fact from fiction there are a number of questions we should be asking every time any information is presented to us.

In the absence of solid scientific data, the "effective" sales representative makes use of the other tools that you should be aware of:

When in doubt about a set of results, ask a scientist!

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Competitiveness of Pork Production

Knudson and Arentson, both from Cargill, presented some figures on the relative cost of pork production at the January 2007 Banff Pork Conference.

Much variation exists within and across countries in producing pork, regardless of market structure.  Leading pork producing countries were surveyed to determine the cost of production from local contacts and production data in early 2006.  Based upon this work, the cost of production average $1.118 per kg (USA $ per kg live weight) across the 13 leading pork production countries, using the currency exchange at that time.

As can be seen, South Africa was not very competitive, even in 2006.  This is before our grain and protein prices began to rocket.

Tyson and Anti-biotics

Tyson Foods Inc. can no longer label its products as "raised without antibiotics", according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

In  the last edition of SPEFEED NEWS I made mention of the fact that Tyson will be marketing a premium range of poultry products bearing the label "raised without antibiotics".  There has been an interesting little twist to this story and I have repeated the press release here.

According to the USDA the company spent millions of dollars on advertising and promotion campaigns to boost the sales of its products.  Meanwhile, Tyson Food said that it stands by the truthfulness of its product labels and remain fully committed to its "Raised without Antibiotics" chicken program.  The company added that it expects no disruption in service to its customers.

Tyson had previously received approval from the USDA in May to label its products as raised without antibiotics.  However, Tyson's poultry-feed formulations still contain ionophores, which are antibiotics according to the FSIS policy.  Tyson said in a statement, "We do not believe ionophores are antibiotics.  FDA is the agency Congress has authorised to regulate animal drugs and its specifically excludes ionophores from the list of animal drugs deemed as antibiotics."

Tyson noted that ionophores are in a different class and antibiotics and are recognised and approved by the federal government as a safe feed ingredient.  The company added that ionophores are permitted in chicken feed as a preventive measure against coccidiosis, an intestinal illness.  Tyson stated that ionophores  remain in the intestinal tract of the animal and do not carry over into meat consumed by humans.

Tyson reportedly has 45 days to remove the labels from its products or stop using ionophores.  In addition, the USDA gave the company the option of petitioning it to initiate a public-comment period on wheather ionophores could be used in meat and poultry products labelled as "raised without antibiotics".  Tyson was also reportedly given an option of submitting a new label application with new documentation.

Just prior to going to press, Tyson accounced that it would indeed change its labelling.

 Rick Kleyn

Phosphorus in Broiler Breeders Diets

In a recent completed research, Plumstead and Brake studied the requirements of broiler breeders for Phosphorus (P) in broiler breeders. They were not able to demonstrate any negative effect on mortality, egg production, fertility, or hatchability when all added Dicalcium Phosphate in the diet was removed and replaced with 500 U/kg phytase.  This was ascribed to the fact that coprophagy of faecal P may contribute substantially to the total P supply to the birds.  It would also indicate that the levels of P currently used in broiler breeder diets might be far too high.  

Those who attended the WPSA Scientific day held at the CSIR in October will have heard Peter Plumstead's excellent talk on phosphorus (P) levels of broiler breeder diets.  The paper was co-authored by John Brake.  Peter has kindly allowed me access to his in information so that i could produce a short article here.

The P levels used in diets for broiler breeders are frequently extrapolated from studies conducted on commercial laying hens or broiler breeders housed in cages.  However, most commerical breeders are kept in houses with all-litter or two-thirds slat-litter floors.  Under these conditions, coprophagy of faecal P may contribute substantially to the dialy P intake of birds, reducing the level of P required in the diet.

Before entering into any discussion about P nutrition, it is perhaps a good idea to define the terminology used in this field.  I have included definitions of each of the terms in the table: 

Table 1: Definition of terms used in phosphorus nutrition.

To show the differences between the different systems, a typical breeder diet was analysed.  The P value was .63%, the AvP value was 0.4%, the NPP value was 0.38% and the OPL was 0.36%.

Plumstead and Brake measured the effects of the level of Available Phosphorus (AvP), combined with phytase in the diets of broiler breeders.  The birds were housed on two-third slat-litter floors.

Three studies were conducted in which treatments with varying levels of dietary P and phytase were applied during the breeder laying phase (Experiments 1 and 2) or the combined growing (10-21 wk) and laying phase (>21 wk).

In the Experiment 1, there was no effect of dietary P level or added phytase on any of the performance variables measured.  This despite the fact that AvP intake of broiler breeder hens at a peak feed allocation of 158.5g/bird/day at 30 wk of age ranged from 317 to 792.5mg/bird/day.

In Experiment 2 however, the birds fed the lowest level of AvP (0.1%) had reduced production.  The loss in production corresponded to a significant increase in female mortality that occurred during the summer months on days when maximum temperatures in house exceeded 35^oC.  When phytase was added (500 U/kg) to the diet, the increase in female mortality was not observed.  It was assumed that the addition of phytase increased in AvP level by 0.1%.

This outcome suggests that the P requirement of breeders increased during heat stress.  In spite of the extreme temperatures, an AvP intake of 316 mg/bird/day (600 mg total P) at a peak daily feed intake was sufficient to reverse the high mortality experienced.  This would indicate that the AvP requirement of hens under heat stress conditions was met at an intake of 316mg/bird/day.  The intake of Ca from the diet was 4.3g/bird/day.

Table 2: Treatments and performance results from Broiler Breeder Experiment 2

The estimated P requirement is lower than previous reports.  For example, the Ross (2007) recommendation for birds at peak production is in excess of 550mg/bird/day.  It appears that broiler breeder fed phytase and housed a slat-litter floors may well able to adequately supplement their P intake by coprophagy of faecal P from the scratch area of the pen.  This may explain at least some of the differences observed.  (Local research (Hatting, 2003) with commercial laying hens would suggest that the levels of P that we currently use in our diets, may well exceed the requirements by several fold, and this may well be the same in the case of broiler breeder, Ed.) 

In the third experiment conducted by Plumstead and Brake measured the effects of using low levels of AvP from 10 wk of age.

Table 3: Treaments and performance results from Broiler Breeder Experiment 3

*These diets contain added phytase

Hen Day (HD) production was significantly higher in the case of treatment 4, and although not statistically significant, these birds produced the highest number of chicks per hen housed. 

Peter Plumstead, John Brake

NC State University .

The Use of the Net Energy System in Pig Diets

Use of the Net Energy (NE) system will allow the nutritionist to formulate diets that provide the pig the energy that it needs for efficient and predictable growth. Diets formulated on an NE basis will promote better environmental stewardship and more sustainable pig production.  Whilst it could be argued that NE system has shortcomings regarding our knowledge of energy and nutrients digestibility, which depend on the chemical characteristics of the feed, (bio)technological treatments and animal factors, this shortcoming applies to all of the energy systems that nutritionists use today.

Following on the mention of the INRAPORC program in the last edition of the SPESFEED NEWS, we have come across some more very interesting work by Noblet and his co-workers at INRA regarding the use of the Net Energy (NE) system in pig diets.  This was presented at the last Banff Pork Seminar.  In addition, we have included some detail from a paper presented Payne and Ziljstra (www.banffpork.ca).

As the energy component represents the greatest proportion of the cost of pig diets, it is important to estimate the energy value of feeds precisely.  This impacts on feed formulation, the prediction of animal performance and allows for accurate adaption of feed supply to energy requirements of animals.

For most pig diets, the digestibility coefficient of energy (DCe) varies between 70% and 90% but the variation is larger for feed ingredients (10 to 100%).  Most of the variation of DCe is related negatively to the presence of dietary fibre (DF) which is less digestible than other nutrients (<50% vs. 80-100% for starch, sugars, fat or protein) and reduces the apparent faecal digestibility of other dietary nutrients such as crude protein and fat.

Digestibility can be modified by technological treatments.  For example, pelleting increases the energy digestibility of feeds by about 1%.  It is also affected by animal factors.  In growing pigs, DCe increases with increasing size (age), with the largest differences being observed between growing pigs and sows.  This difference is most pronounced for high fibre ingredients, and is related to an improved digestive utilization of fibre in the caecum.  Little difference was observed between lactating and gestating sows.

Although there is little information concerning comparative digestibility in piglets and growing pigs, the fact that piglets are usually fed low-fibre diets would minimize any difference.

In practical terms,  DE values of ingredients can be obtained from tables, but the use of these figures should be restricted to ingredients having chemical characteristics similar or close to those in the table itself.  In reality, we hould be using different DE values for animals of different ages.

INRA have addressed this problem by making use of two NE values, for "60kg" pigs which can be applied to piglets and growing pigs and the other for adult pigs.  They have published prediction equations based on chemical criteria, for calculating these values (www.inapg.inra.fr).

Table 1: A comparison between DE values (SPESFEED), and the NE values (INRA).

Assuming the NE represents the best estimate of the "true energy value of feeds, the energy value of protein-rich or fibrous feeds is overestimated when expressed on a DE basis.  On the other hand, fat or starch sources are underestimated.

In terms of predicting animal performance, energy requirements should be expressed in a manner that is independent of diet characteristics.  Growth trials, where diets with variable dietary fat or protein levels were fed, showed that the energy costs of growth are independent of diet composition when expressed on a NE basis.

Most published energy recommendations for pigs have been established from trial conducted according to DE and ME estimates for feeds.  Often conventional feeds, i.e. cereals-soybean meal based diets, were used in the evaluations.  The efficiency of DE and of ME utilization in growing pigs in close to 71% and 74% respectively and it was proposed that these figures be used when estimating dietary NE requirements.  This proposal is applicable at any stage of production, including sows.

The NE system has been adapted rather more slowly than would be expected.  Payne and Zijlstra discussed the practical application of the NE system.  They point out that many nutritionist continue to formulate diets using DE or ME, for a number of reasons:

They make the comment that a downfall of any energy system, including NE, is that most nutritionist have been and still are using the same energy values for their ingredients as they have been using for years.  These energy values mayy have been developed within each company over the years or they could simply be average values from reference tables.  This may work for NE as well, but it is certainly not the best management practice,  because with every change in the crude nutrient (protein, fibre, fat, etc.) profile, there also is a change in the energy available from that ingredient.

Payne and Zijlstra give some guidelines as to how to implement the NE System:

It may be appropriate to run the two systems in parallel for a while until a "feeling" for the NE values in built up.

At SPESFEED we have gone through the exercise of building up a matrix for each of the ingredients that we use (Table 1).  It is of interest to note that Noblet suggests that we should adjust the current DE specifications by 0.71, while Payne and Zijlstra suggest that a "new" NE value be "calculated".

In table 2, a typical grower diet formulated using the existing DE system, and then formulated using the adjustments for first Payne and Zijlstra and then Noblet.

Table 2: A comparison of a Grower diet formulated on a DE basis, with diets formulated on an NE basis according to the recommendations of Payne et al., and Noblet.

As can be seen, the diets formulated as per the method of Payne and Zijlstra led to a saving of more than R 35.00 per ton, while the using Noblet’s fixed factor of 0.71 led to an increase in feed cost of about R6.00.  We believe that formulated using the method of Noblet would out perform the other two diets.  It is our intention to adjust specifications on a case by case basis, trying to maintain a consistent price while improving animal performance.

Our finding, and that of Noblet and Payne, is that formulating diets on an NE basis is usually associated with a shift in diet composition with lower protein contents and slightyl higher fat contents.  Note how Hominy Chop is eliminated from the diets formulated on an NE basis.  Also note how the levels of synthetic amino acids increase.

Against this background, SPESFEED have decided to adopt the INRA NE system in all our pig diets future.

Walter Scharlach & Rick Kleyn