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

Robert Swick, consistent with the report by Mr George Entz, research work that we conducted with broiler chicken, the results of which are published here at ENGORMIX, under the title: Digestible lysine levels obtained by two methods of formulation of diets for 22- to-42-day-old broilers confirm that diets with a full protein level provide better performance results for broilers.

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.

The prices are a moving target. But yes that paper is AUD not Euros.
We can say that as time goes by, the purified AA sources will likely get cheaper as demand picks up and economy of scale is realised. The next thing to be considered will be sustainability.
On first thought, most will think purified sources will be more sustainable than SBM. However one needs to consider the input materials to produce purified AA sources including water, starch, sugar, nitrogen and electricity for maintaining fermentation temperature and drying the final product. Methionine is truly synthetic being made from petroleum derived chemicals methyl mercaptan, acrolein and hydrogen cyanide (and petroleum is not very sustainable).
Soybeans are grown on farms using varying degrees of sustainable practices. But they do employ rural people and put more nitrogen into the soil than they take away. The amino acids produced by soybeans use nitrogen fixed from the air. When produced in situations where they do not impact important natural habitats they are truly a highly sustainable miracle crop.

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