Growth Where It Counts – Keep More Nitrogen In Your Birds Via High-Shear Dry Extrusion
Recently, we completed a study at Iowa State University that indicated the many benefits of using Hi-Gel™ Corn versions of commodity ingredients, namely corn and soybean meal. You can read about the results here.
The main idea is that broiler chickens fed Hi-Gel™ Corn and ExPress® soy meal achieve market weight over four days quicker (roughly a 10% increase in productivity.) In a typical production facility – a fixed asset that wears down over time – this could add 1 more flock per year.
But what happens on the output end? Do these increases in growth come with an increased output of nitrogen? Not only does nitrogen excretion cause environmental pollution, it also comes at a cost to the birds – eliminating more nitrogen causes the birds to use some energy from the diet that could be used for growth.
Thankfully, we have data from the finisher phase of the Iowa State study that helps us understand what’s going on:
The effects of ingredients on body weight gain and nitrogen excretion in broilers can be seen in the graph above. As already indicated, when broilers were fed Hi-Gel™ Corn and ExPress® soy meal, body weight gain was maximized.
However, while nitrogen excretion does increase as more of it is consumed (i.e., the line goes up from left to right,) the response plateaus. This means that more of the nitrogen in the diet remains in the bird during growth. If this was not happening, the line would be perfectly straight.
An analogy to this would be pumping more water into a pipe already full of water – as a certain amount is pumped in, that same amount of water must exit the pipe. In our case, the birds use the additional nitrogen (which comes along with protein) and grow faster.
High-shear dry extruded versions of commodities keep more nutrients within broilers as they put it to use for better growth performance.
Contact us for more information on how switching to Hi-Gel™ Corn & ExPress® soy meal can improve growth performance & reduce nitrogen excretion in your broilers.
