Thursday, March 28, 2024
General Agriculture

Advantages and Disadvantages of Compounded Animal Feeds

Compound animal feeds are unique among manufactured products in that they represent, as it were, a vital link in the human food chain. Like other links in natural food chains, one diet may differ from another generically, yet both satisfy to the same degree the nutrient requirements of the animal.

For example, the dietary needs of rapidly growing broiler chickens can be just as satisfactorily met by a ration made from mixtures of tropical feeds tuffs such as rice bran, cassava, groundnut cake, copra cake, fish meal, and leaf meal, as by another ration made from mixtures of maize, soyabean meal, fish meal, and alfalfa meal.

Considering the urgent need for increased animal protein production and the under-utilization of primary food resources in many developing countries, the establishment of viable feed processing industries in those countries represents a special challenge with broad socio-economic ramifications for national governments and almost unlimited opportunities for entrepreneurs.

Advantages of a Compounded Animal Feed

1. Efficiency

When compounded feed is fed to animals, there is no wastage and no selective eating by the animal because the component of the feed are well blended and mixed together.

Efficiency is obtainable because the quantity of feed given to animals at a particular period of time is well consumed, and for this reason, it helps the farmer to maximize feed usage.

2. Economy

When cross bred animals e.g. pigs are fed with nutritionally balanced feed, they grow faster, reduce the growing period and yield other benefit.

If there is 50% replacement of the local feeds with nutritionally balanced compounded feed, the following benefit are expected

  1. Reaches the body weight requirement within a short period of time.
  2. Early farrowing e.g pigs and produces 1-2 additional piglets per farrowing.
  3. Saves feed required for the extra growing period
  4. Saves (women) labour used in cooking feed.
  5. Saves costs of firewood in cooking feed.
  6. No extra labour, machinery, mixing or storage costs.

3. Performance

A well prepared feed fed to animals’ works perfectly in terms of health and conversion of such feeds into body weight conformation.

If the balanced feed is compounded locally, price and quality can be controlled which in turn have impact to maintain and convert the feed to body weight. .

4. Quality

Ingredients are carefully selected and controlled therefore the quality of feed is maintained. Every ingredients found in the feed is carefully selected and the amount is well controlled.

That is why expertise is required to carefully select the ingredient and to use them in the right amount in order not to overdose feed with a particular ingredient.

5. Service

Efficient ordering and delivery service, no time lost and farmers can easily access the feed for their livestock.

6. Nutrition

Compounded feeds are highly nutritious compare to other sources of anima`s feed. And there is high digestibility when animals are fed with compounded feed compare to straight feed and other feeds.

Expert knowledge, experience and technology are both employed in compounding the feed therefore its highly nutritious and can easily be digested by animals.

7. Value

Compounded feeds all add up to excellent value for money. Those who are into such business make a lot of money because the business is highly lucrative.

Compound feeds are rations, normally available in either a cube or mix form, which are fed alongside with good quality forage.

8. Traceable

Feed ingredients, including additives, are traceable which enable proper record keeping for timely and effective withdrawal or recall of products if known or probable adverse effects on consumers‘ health are identified.

Read Also: How to Make a Balanced Feed Formulation for Cattle, Sheep and Goats

Records should be maintained and readily available regarding the production, distribution and use of feed and feed ingredients to facilitate the prompt trace-back of feed and feed ingredients to the immediate previous source and trace-forward to the next subsequent recipients if known or probable adverse effects on consumers‘ health are identified.

Disadvantages of Compounded Animal Feed

1. Compounding the feed requires an expertise

In compounding the feed, one has to be knowledgeable and well trained, selecting the ingredients is not an easy task and if the ingredients are wrongly selected or used in the right proportion, it can interfere with the animal`s health.

Therefore in preparing compounded feed, a knowledgeable and a technical-know-how individual is needed to control the amount of ingredient needed, consider

the specie of the animal and to know how the manipulate the machine.

2. Accumulation of chemical additives

Chemical additives in compounded feed accumulate in animal tissues, potentially exposing consumers to unwanted chemicals such as veterinary drugs residues and heavy metals.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Compounded Animal Feeds

Compounded feeds that have high amount of chemicals additives has negative effect on the animal. When animals consumed such feed overtime, they may likely to come down with diseases due to the accumulation of chemicals in their tissues, and such diseases may be zoonotic in nature i.e. it can easily be transmitted to man when he consume animals that were fed with compounded feed that has chemical additives.

3. Compounding the feed could be capital intensive

For commercial purpose, compound feeds can appear expensive, particularly specialist diets such as those designed for breeding horses.

The ingredients required to make the feed may not be available at all time in appreciable quantity, and this could lead to an increase in the prices of the raw material needed to prepare the feed.

4. Mixing the feed, it is time consuming

Blending and mixing the feed is time consuming most especially when the feed is meant for commercial purpose.

Compounding the manually, can be stressful and time consuming. But when machines are used to mix the feed, the time consumed is less compare to when a farmer is compounding the feed manually.

5. It can look boring for animals to consume

Compounded feed appears in different shapes and sizes colour, some appear in cubes, nuts or other shapes but those in nuts shapes seems to be looking boring for animals to consume.

Even the colour of the feed can also affect the feed consumption rate of the animal. Some colours of the feed may look strange and scary to the animal.

6. Compound feed is very expensive compare to straight feed

Most farmers prefer straight feeds compare to compounded feed not because the straight feed is more nutritious than the compounded feed but because compounded feeds are very expensive and not all farmers can afford the feed for their animals.

Even the raw materials required to make compounded feed cannot be easily sourced. So therefore farmers tend to go for straight feeds since they are cheaper and their raw materials can be easily sourced.

Recommendations

All feed and feed ingredients should meet minimum safety standards. It is essential that levels of undesirable substances are sufficiently low in feed and feed ingredients that their concentration in food for human consumption is consistently below the level of concern.

The presence in feed and feed ingredients of undesirable substances such as industrial and environmental contaminants, pesticides, radionuclides, persistent organic pollutants, pathogenic agents and toxins such as mycotoxins should be identified, controlled and minimized.

Feed additives and veterinary drugs used in medicated compounded feed should be assessed for safety and used under stated conditions of use as pre- approved by the competent authorities.

Read Also: The 4 Constraints to Crop Production in Africa

Veterinary drugs used in medicated feed should comply with the provisions of the Codex Recommended International Code of Practice for the Control of the Use of Feed and feed ingredients.

Compounded feed should only be produced, marketed, stored and used if they are safe and suitable, and, when used as intended, should not represent in any way an unacceptable risk to consumers‘ health.

In particular, feed and feed ingredients contaminated with unacceptable levels of undesirable substances should be clearly identified as unsuitable for animal feed and not be marketed or used Veterinary Drugs.

In summary, the use of suitable, safe and good quality feed and feed ingredients is of paramount importance to livestock production. Safe feed is an essential element to reduce and prevent food safety hazards entering the food chain.

The presence in feed of food safety hazards that can lead to public health problems should be prevented or minimized.

Good Agricultural Practices (GAP), Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) and, if applicable, Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) are important instruments to control hazards in the feed production process.

Read Also: The Concept of Animal Production on Agriculture

Do you have any further questions or other contributions? then kindly use the comment box provided below for all your contributions. You are also encouraged to please kindly share this article with others you feel might benefit from this information as we may not be able to reach everyone at the same time. Thank you so much for reading and sharing!

Agric4Profits

Benadine Nonye is an agricultural consultant and a writer with over 12 years of professional experience in the agriculture industry. - National Diploma in Agricultural Technology - Bachelor's Degree in Agricultural Science - Master's Degree in Science Education... Visit My Websites On: 1. Agric4Profits.com - Your Comprehensive Practical Agricultural Knowledge and Farmer’s Guide Website! 2. WealthinWastes.com - For Effective Environmental Management through Proper Waste Management and Recycling Practices! Join Me On: Twitter: @benadinenonye - Instagram: benadinenonye - LinkedIn: benadinenonye - YouTube: Agric4Profits TV and WealthInWastes TV - Pinterest: BenadineNonye4u - Facebook: BenadineNonye

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