Measure, adjust and optimise: Turning poultry feed into profit
Feed formulation is becoming ever more complex and can be considered a true balancing act. How can nutritionists manage uncertainty while maintaining strong profitability and optimal poultry performance? The answer lies in using the right tools and targeted feed additives. Here is how.
Variability in raw materials, price fluctuations, and shifting production and sustainability goals force nutritionists to constantly balance precision with practicality. This demands accurate nutrient values for the feed ingredients we use. However, these values are not always well defined, leading to excessive safety margins that can increase costs, compromise animal health and performance, and raise the environmental footprint of feed and farming.
Before safety margins can be reduced with confidence, reliable nutrient values, derived from accurate analysis and robust formulation tools, are essential. Beyond this, targeted feed additives and nutritional expertise are needed to ensure the formulated diet delivers maximum performance. To convert feed into greater profitability, 4 key steps must therefore be effectively managed:
- Reveal the true value of your feed: Analyse precise nutrient values, digestibility, and any anti-nutritional factors to reveal the true value of the feed and appropriately adjust safety margins.
- Formulate with precision and confidence: Use accurate nutrient data, digital formulation tools, and application of solutions such as enzymes, emulsifiers, and methionine supplementation to optimise the diet reformulation.
- Secure essential nutrition (vitamins): Ensure the inclusion of essential nutrients, particularly vitamins, remains a critical foundation to ensure consistency, resilience, and animal health, even under cost pressure.
- Shape a sustainable future: Apply expert guidance and services (including Adisseo’s SustainWay) to improve efficiency and hence increase profitability and reduce the environmental impact of the feed (or even the whole farm).
Reveal the true value of your feed
Because the quality of raw materials and their nutrient values can vary widely, relying solely on average feed table values can result in significant formulation inefficiencies. This can be especially determinable for key nutrients such as digestible amino acids and energy.
PNE: Accurate insights in nutrient values and ANFs
To overcome this uncertainty in raw material quality and turn variability into value, Adisseo developed the Precise Nutrition Evaluation tool (hereafter called PNE). Based on Near Infra-Red (NIR) technology, PNE can predict multiple characteristics impacting nutritional quality, such as digestible amino acids, metabolisable energy corrected for nitrogen (AMEn) for poultry. The tool is trusted and field-proven, with over 420,000 samples analysed each year by 460 active users worldwide supporting the NIR database that fuels the PNE tool.
PNE data has confirmed large variability in AMEn levels in wheat batches. Wheat sourced from South Asia exhibited the highest average AMEn value, while wheat from South America showed the greatest variability (Figure 1a). Digestible lysine levels in corn also show large variability (Figure 1b), as well as phytic phosphorous levels in corn DDGS. These real-time insights allow nutritionists to reduce uncertainty, rethink their sourcing strategy, and adjust formulations proactively.
Figure 1 – Examples of the large variability seen in raw materials. Left (a): AME distribution in wheat between different regions. Right (b): Digestible lysine distribution in corn from different regions.
PNE also helps to assess the anti-nutritional factors (ANFs) content. ANFs include phytate, NSPs (like arabinoxylans, or Ax) and NDF (total insoluble NSPs) and can negatively affect digestibility, feed intake and hence the performance of the birds. Understanding ANFs in raw materials is important to formulate smarter (and to include enzymes more precisely, for example).
Formulate with precision and intelligence
The next step is to update the nutrient matrix accordingly using accurate nutrient values. Designed by Adisseo for speed, accuracy, and simplicity, ADICT is an online tool that empowers users to incorporate PNE data directly into their feed formulations. The tool, which was launched in 2021, ensures formulations reflect actual raw material quality, leading to enhanced formulation precision. ADICT includes around 100 available raw materials, 130 nutrients for poultry, and a 30% activity increase year on year.
FDC: Taking feed digestibility into account
When diets have been reformulated, we want the diet to perform as expected in practical conditions. But from experience we know that the same feed can perform differently in another setting or farm due to differences in the efficiency of feed digestion, driven by gender and genetics of the birds, among others. So how can we better predict this? The AMEn is a key indicator of feed digestibility, reflecting the energy available to the bird after accounting for energy losses in excreta. To account for individual farm and animal parameters when the feed is actually consumed, Adisseo developed the Feed Digestibility Check (hereafter called FDC). This service enables nutritionists to accurately predict the true AMEn level of the feed in the context of real production and farming conditions.
Inclusion of enzymes and other feed additives
The use of enzymes and certain feed additives, with proven matrix values, are key to unlock nutrients, reduce feed costs, and improve animal performance. For optimal nutrient release through the use of enzymes, Adisseo developed the Feedase concept.
Feedase is not a single enzyme, but a combination of enzymes chosen to break down multiple anti-nutritional factors in feed. Rovabio Advance and Rovabio PhyPlus are proven examples of the effect of Feedase because they improve the digestibility of all several nutrients, including amino acids, phosphorus (P) and calcium, regardless of the type of diet.
Rovabio is built on 30 years of feed digestibility expertise that revealed among others that Rovabio Advance increases not only AME levels, but also amino acid digestibility by 3.3% in specific diet characteristics (Figure 2). Rovabio PhyPlus aims at degrading phytic acid (as much as possible), improving overall feed digestibility and releasing enough P to partially or completely meet the birds’ P requirements. With Adisseo’s Feedase predictor, nutritionists can make a customised, tailormade matrix for Rovabio based on specific PNE results on ANFs from their own scanned raw materials or use the average prediction data.
Figure 2 – Proven matrix values of Rovabio Advance
Precision intelligence is also enforced by the use of FRA LeciMax, aimed to further improve nutrient and energy digestibility and hence allows for oil reduction in the feed. This feed additive is a concentrated lysolecithins-based emulsifier that increases enzymatic potential and nutrient absorption, translated into improved feed conversion ratio and average daily gain.
Next to this, the formulation and source of methionine chosen is key for optimal performance and profits. Rhodimet AT88 is a source of methionine with a minimum concentration of active molecule (HMTBa) of 88%. Feed formulation matrix values for Rhodimet AT88 on crude protein equivalence, energy values, activity, ABC-4 value are available for optimal use and value for the feed miller and to support bird performance.
Secure essential nutrition (vitamins)
Essential nutrients, including vitamins, remain a critical foundation to ensure consistency, resilience, and animal health, even under cost pressure. Vitamins represent only 0.5% of total feed cost, yet they can influence performance by up to 10%. The quality and quantity of vitamins used in broiler diets is therefore essential to support optimal growth, reproduction, metabolic and immune function, and high-quality muscle development and metabolic functions.
But for vitamin A, to ensure good absorption by the animal, the vitamin must resist all feed processing steps and be effectively released in the bird. Microvit A Supra 1000 was developed to meet this need.
In the case of vitamin E, which protects cells from oxidative stress by neutralising reactive oxygen species, supports cellular integrity, strengthens immunity, and contributes to reproductive development, the required level in feed can vary depending on the objective. With Microvit E Promix 50, Adisseo can help you determine the right dosage.
Beyond the quality and quantity of vitamins, it is essential to ensure the safety of vitamins, and the Microvit Certification System screens more than 30 contaminants and physical characteristics of each vitamin, guaranteeing its safety. Backed by precise usage guidelines in the Microvit Nutrition Guide 2026, the use of Microvit line, you will have a cost-effective and smart choice, ensuring optimal health and performance.
Shape a sustainable future
Sustainability has become an important part of precision formulation, and maybe one of the most challenging parts of the nutritionist’ balancing act. To support nutritionists to reduce the environmental footprint of feed and poultry products, Adisseo has introduced a new module within ADICT, allowing nutritionists to instantly evaluate the environmental impact of their formulations.
Through the ‘ADICT sustainability module’, users can easily extract environmental impact values for many ingredients and integrate them into the formulation software. The values used in the module (around 1,500 ingredient/origin couples) come from the well-recognised and robust GFLI database, an international collection of feed ingredient datasets calculated by using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology. The rules from PEFCR Feed are applied in ADICT when one origin doesn’t exist for one ingredient.
In addition, ADICT is a crucial part of Sustainway, Adisseo’s sustainability journey service. Based on 4 different steps (SustainBeginner, SustainGrower, SustainPioneer and SustainMaster), this service allows customers to get familiar with and build their complete sustainability journey, considering feed, farm management, resources and animal performances. By combining innovative nutritional products and solutions with science-based services such as ADICT, Adisseo supports the transition towards a more responsible, sustainable and efficient livestock sector.
References are available on request.
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