Tamsyn Crowley

Zambia’s poultry industry is comprised of the commercial and indigenous chicken (IC) sectors. Large horizontally integrated private establishments run the commercial sector. In contrast, the IC sector involves small-scale farmers (SSF), producing IC under a free-range system. The IC sector has an important role in complementing the commercial chicken sector while improving rural livelihoods ...

Laying hens have a cyclic reproductive physiology that requires high dietary protein and energy levels for yolk and albumen formation in the early morning and high dietary Ca levels for shell and membrane formation in the afternoon/evening. Therefore, feeding one diet throughout each day may be problematic as there is excess Ca in the morning and excess protein/amino acids and energy in the aftern ...

1. IntroductionPoultry is the most consumed animal protein source in the world, and the trend is expected to continue increasing [1]. The world population reached 8 billion in 2022, and is likely to reach 9 billion in 2037 [2], which will continue to increase pressure on the global chicken-meat industry. One way to meet this increasing demand is to improve the efficiency of chicken-meat production ...

Max-profit and stochastic approaches use production, market and nutrient variability data to formulate diets by more economically sustainable means; giving increased flexibility, opportunity and capacity for the Australian poultry industry to cope and thrive under market challenges (Moss et al. 2020; Sterling et al., 2005). However, in order for producers to accurately formulate diets using max-pr ...

I. IntroductionTypical Australian broiler diets contain 2.5-3.0 g/kg phytate-P or roughly 10.0 g/kg phytate; therefore, phytase is included into every Australian broiler diet. As phytase is capable of increasing the availability of phosphorus, calcium, sodium, amino acids and energy content of diets, these nutrients may be decreased in the feed formulations as ‘matrix values’ without a ...

Broiler chickens grow rapidly with nutrient requirements changing daily. However, broilers are fed 3-5 diet stages throughout their growth, meaning nutrients are under- and over-supplied throughout production (Kleyn, 2013). Thus, blending rations on a daily basis to meet the daily energy and lysine requirements may improve the efficiency and reduce the coefficient of variation (CV) in broiler floc ...

Feed accounts for more than 65% of poultry production costs; thus, accurate feed formulation is vital to ensure poultry are receiving an optimal diet and nutrients are not in under- or oversupply. However, this is difficult when the nutrient specifications of feed ingredients are highly variable. In order to help reduce this variability, appropriate sampling methodology is critical. Nevertheless, ...