Economics of Low Protein Broiler Diets: A Formulation Exercise

Carlos Martínez Amezcua
Hi Carlos,
Great point you are making! If we reduce the crude protein and use more crystalline amino acids to satisfy their requirement soybean meal inclusion is decreased. There will likely be less benefit of phytase as there is less substrate (phytin) for the phytase to degrade. I don't have the full answer but I agree that the phytase matrix values will likely be affected.
Bob Swick

Juarez Donzele
I tend to agree. I think there is a lot of focus on reduced protein without regard for economics and performance. And in the real world, we have challenges with Eimeria and Clostridium not to mention viruses and parasites. When there are GIT challenges, having less undigested protein reach the hindgut is advantageous as there will be less ammonia produced. Ammonia increases pH and favours the growth of Clostridia. This means it is better to formulate feed with protein that is highly digestible as opposed to poorly digested. A combination of high quality grain, soybean meal and lysine with methionine and threonine is recommended.
Bob Swick

Oh I see. these are AU dollars. Not so far away from Europe prices then.

Robert Swick . Excellent comment on sustainability, however do not discount the sustainability of the chemicals used to produce the amino acids and vitamins. Many times the production of these nutrients using chemicals is an integrated operation and they used chemicals (by products) from the production of other products. Many times cyanide and HCl acid are in surplus from other reactions. To get a true value of sustainability, one must calculate the entire production processes of producing several products.

David Wicker Ph. D.Hi David, Thanks for the comments and great to hear from you!
Yes, the sustainability aspects need to be worked out for sure. Getting an economic value is relatively easy compared to a sustainability value. Sustainability needs to consider things like fossil fuel consumption, climate change, eutrophication, acidification, smog formation, land use, employment and probably some others we haven't thought of yet. And then we need to distill them down into a simple index so we can use it to formulate feed. Perhaps such an index can be used as another "nutrient" in the ingredient matrix. The weighting of the components of sustainability will require some agreement between people. Anyway just some further thoughts.....
Best regards,
Bob