Most poultry producers identify feed issues and feed costs as one of their biggest challenges. Part of the problem is that the UK poultry industry depends heavily on imports, leaving producers at the mercy of global commodity prices for key feed ingredients. For organic farmers, the problem is even more acute; organic, and indeed non-GM, soya is getting harder to come by and therefore more expensive.

1. Digital Re-print November | December 2013
FEED FOCUS: Organic feeds: the future for
sustainable poultry farming?
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2. Organic feeds:
the future for sustainable
poultry farming?
by Tony Little, Organic
Centre Wales; Cliff Nixey,
Poultry Xperience; Rachel
Marsh, Capestone Organic
Poultry
M
ost poultry producers identify
feed issues and feed costs as one
of their biggest challenges. Part
of the problem is that the UK poultry
industry depends heavily on imports,
leaving producers at the mercy of global
commodity prices for key feed ingredients. For organic farmers, the problem
is even more acute; organic, and indeed
non-GM, soya is getting harder to come
by and therefore more expensive.
There are also the principles of the
organic movement to consider. self-sufficiency and the idea that stock should
be fed, as far as possible from the farm,
is one of the cornerstones of organic
thinking. However, a report prepared by
the Soil Association in 2010 shows that a
significant proportion of feed ingredients
come from as far afield as Russia, Australia,
Ukraine, Kazakhstan, South America and
China. Clearly there is some way to go. If
we want to build resilience into our farming
systems, if we want quality, traceable feed
at prices we can control, and if we want to
reduce the environmental burden of our
feed system, then it seems logical that we
need to produce more of it at home.
Organic Centre Wales has been working on poultry feed issues for several years.
With funding from the Welsh government
through the Better Organic Business project
and Farming Connect, we have taken three
different approaches to the problem:
26 | november - december 2013
Table 1: Nutritional analysis of entire and dehulled peas and beans
Peas
Nutrient %
Entire
Crude protein
Dehulled
19.7
Beans
Hulls only
20.2
Entire
19
27.4
Dehulled
29.9
Hulls only
11.9
Crude fibre
4.8
2.5
14
10
5.4
42.1
Moisture
15.8
15.8
14.2
15.1
14.5
13.6
Oil (B )
1.98
1.9
2.21
1.55
1.57
0.83
Lysine
1.57
1.78
1.3
1.46
1.92
0.4
Methionine
0.2
0.24
0.2
0.16
0.22
0.03
Sugar
3.28
2.55
3.91
2.85
2.7
2.2
Starch
45.8
66**
28.5
29.6
33.6
5.9
M.E. MJ/kg (calculated)
11.81
12.5
8.97
10.09
11.14
3.4
Meth.+ Cyst. (calculated)
0.48
0.59
0.4
0.49
0.58
0.12
Threonine (calculated)
0.75
0.92
0.62
0.87
1.04
0.22
Tryptophane (calculated)
0.19
0.23
0.16
0.2
0.24
0.05
Arginine (calculated)
1.76
2.16
1.46
2.3
2.74
0.57
• Growing better
quality cereals and
fostering direct
relationships
between arable and
poultry producers
• Improving the quality
of our homegrown
protein crops such
as peas and beans by
dehulling the grain
Table 2: Opportunity prices of dehulled peas and beans in various
rations
Turkey
starter
Peas entire (£/t)
Turkey
grower
Broiler
finisher
Chicken
layer
391
439
274
307
Peas dehulled (£/t)
440
514
383
359
Beans entire (£/t)
343
395
101
221
Beans dehulled (£/t)
414
514
255
302
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4. POULTRY
Table 3: Field observations
25 September
Naked oats as a quality poultry
feed
Naked oats are varieties that thresh free
from their husks during combining, increasing the density of nutrients and offering real
advantages to pigs and poultry. They have a
high energy content (over 16ME in new varieties) and crude protein values at up to 14.8
percent, but it is perhaps their amino acid
profile, which closely matches the requirements of the birds, that makes them so
attractive as a feed. So can they be successfully grown in Wales, and are the nutritional
benefits realised under its conditions?
Oats are good competitors against
weeds, tend to be disease resistant and
thrive under lower fertility conditions, all of
which makes them particularly well suited to
organic systems in marginal growing areas.
The growers we worked with had positive
experiences on the whole, although the
poor summer of 2012 meant that some had
to take the grain unripe and crimp it, or even
take it as wholecrop silage for ruminants.
However, the main drawback is yield;
oats generally have lower yields compared
to other cereals, the absence of a husk
means that the yield of naked oats is only
about two-thirds of husked varieties. The
lower yield, however, can be offset by an
increase in nutritional value – by establishing
direct links between arable and poultry producers it is possible to recognise and reward
this. At the same time, these direct relationships can improve the supply of quality,
traceable organic feed from Wales, reduce
the carbon footprint of the enterprise and
bring the production systems closer in line
with organic standards.
Improving our protein crops
Dehulling improves the quality, and
therefore the inclusion rates, of homegrown protein crops such as peas and
beans. It is certainly not a new idea, but we
10 October
16 October
Most flowers still
yellow. A lot of the
seeds white inside
& immature. Larger
heads were dryer
and therefore easier
to sample.
• Exploring opportunities for growing new
crops such as sunflowers
2 October
Flowers rapidly
becoming browner.
Bigger heads are
starting to droop.
Great variation in
head size. Sampling
much easier as
seeds become drier.
Flowers have
developed a lot;
very few yellow
petals left. Seeds
detached very
easily. Foliage
yellowing but still
very leafy and lush.
Most flowers brown
and ready to be
harvested. Some have
lodged. Stems are
becoming yellow. Many
flowers were missing
their outer brown layer.
Seeds detached flowers
very easily
wanted to look at it in the context of farmers
processing their own crops. We analysed the
nutritional content (Table 1) of entire and
dehulled grains and used this information to
calculate the opportunity price in ‘least cost’
formulations for different poultry rations
(Table 2).
We confirmed that dehulling does indeed
increase the nutritional value of peas and
beans as a feed ingredient, especially with
respect to key amino acids. At November
2012 prices for
feed ingredients,
the
associated
economic benefits
varied between
diets. They were
greatest in turkey
diets (which are
higher in protein)
and broiler diets
and more marginal
for layers.
Two
things
could increase the
attractiveness of
dehulling. Firstly,
the likely prospect
of a medium-tolong-term increase
in organic soya
prices, and secondly the development of a market
for the separated
hulls. This could be
as a ruminant feed
or poultry litter
to replace wood
shavings, which are
becoming increasingly expensive.
The cost of purchasing dehulling
and seed cleaning
equipment (in the
region of £15,000
to achieve through-
put of 1.5-2.0 tonnes per hour) and the running costs of the machine, estimated about
£19 per tonne, also need to be factored into
the calculations. Structures to enable farmers
to share facilities, for example machinery
rings, could help to bring down the cost of
the former.
Sunflowers as a feed crop
Wales does not often appear on the list
of sunflower producing countries so this
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Grain
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21/11/2012 15:08

5. 8

6. Table 4 Nutritional content of sunflower seeds over the ripening period
Sample 1
(25/09/2013)
NDF
Crude fibre
3.2
2.3
82.5
Sample 4
(13/10/2013)
6.3
3.1
3.6
3.3
1.8
Sample 3
(10/10/2013)
6.1
4.6
Crude protein
Sample 2
(01/10/2013)
3.6
Moisture
86.9
73.4
71.8
Total oil (B)
2.06
0.73
13.09
Sugar
1.31
1.1
0.27
Starch
0.4
2.3
2.7
0.13
0.16
0.05
0.07
0.21
0.15
Phosphorus
0.09
Non Phytate P
Lysine
0.18
Methionine
0.06
Cystine
0.03
0.05
0.04
Threonine
0.1
0.14
0.11
Arginine
0.13
need the long, hot, dry ripening period, and
if that is the case, can it be grown in useful
quantities here?
We ran a simple trial, funded by
Farming Connect, to help us decide
whether or not the idea merited further
investigation. There was no replication,
no statistical analysis and only one site;
a quick ‘look-see’, to use a very un-technical term. Capestone Organic Poultry in
Haverfordwest planted 2 hectares of sunflowers on their land. We took samples
of 20 heads at weekly intervals between
may, at first, seem an odd choice of crop
to look at. This is because practically all
sunflowers are grown for their oil, most of
which is synthesised during a long, hot, dry
period at the end of the crop’s development.
But if the primary purpose of growing the
crop is for feed, then a number of different
factors come into play, potentially allowing
us to grow sunflowers under a much wider
range of conditions. Oil is produced partly at
the expense of the protein so, from a feed
perspective, the ideal time to harvest is when
it is slightly unripe. This means that we don’t
Table 5: Nutrient content adjusted to 12% moisture compared to sunflower meal
Sample 1
(25/09/2013)
Sample 3
(10/10/2013)
Sample 4
(16/10/2013)
Sunflower meal
(oil extracted)*
NDF
30.9
20.18
19.66
43
Crude protein
12.09
10.26
11.23
28
Crude fibre
21.5
10.92
11.23
28.5
12
12
12
11
13.84
38.81
40.85
2.6
Sugar
8.8
3.64
0.84
4.5
Starch
2.69
Nutrient
Moisture
Total oil (B)
7.61
8.43
3
Phosphorus
0.43
0.5
1
Non Phytate P
0.17
0.22
0.27
Lysine
0.69
0.47
0.98
Methionine
0.3
0.17
0.63
Cystine
0.17
0.12
0.46
Threonine
0.46
0.34
1.02
Arginine
0.86
0.53
2.24
16.65
17.27
6.2
Calculated ME
8.22
* Published data. Source Premier Atlas 2011
28 | november - december 2013
25 September and 17 October 2013,
made field observations on each occasion
(Table 3) and analysed each batch for
nutrient content (Table 4).
In the event, 2013 was not a good year
for sunflowers. They need a warm soil
(6-8 °C) to plant into, and in a ‘normal’
year you would expect the UK to get up to
those temperatures in late March/early April.
With March 2013 being the second coldest
on record, it was mid-May by the time temperatures had become high enough. Even
the warm summer could not make up for
the lost time, and we were not able to get
the grain harvest we had hoped for. Even so,
the experiment yielded some important and
interesting data.
Results
Our biggest problem was high moisture
content, still over 70 percent on the final
sampling date. Indeed, Sample 2 deteriorated
so rapidly it was only possible to get limited
data from it. Had we been able to plant the
crop in early April, the ripening period would
have coincided with the warm, dry months
of August and September and the moisture
content would have been much lower. Even
so, growing for feed instead of oil implies
harvesting unripe, so even in ‘good’ years,
moisture content is likely to be higher than
cereal crops and the crop will usually need
to be dried after harvest. Alternatively it
could be crimped and fed as whole grain.
In terms of nutrient content, the high
moisture levels depressed the proportion of
other nutrients. In order to draw comparisons with commercial sunflower meal, we
adjusted the nutrient levels to be consistent
with a 12 percent moisture content (Table
5), presuming that the crop would be dried
after harvest.
Levels of protein in the seeds were significantly lower than that of commercial meal,
even when adjusted to a 12 percent moisture content. The crop from which the meal
was derived was probably dehulled, and this
could account for some of the difference,
but even so, it seems unlikely that growing
sunflowers will contribute much to increasing the supply of home-grown protein.
But if they were disappointing with
respect to protein, they were surprisingly
promising with respect to energy. Adjusted
for 12 percent moisture, the oil content was
up to 40 percent by the final sampling date,
much higher than we had anticipated under
Welsh conditions. Starch, for reasons that
are not immediately obvious, was nearly
three times that typically found in meal.
On the final sampling date the seed had an
estimated ME of 17.3 MJ/kg, compared to
6.2 MJ/kg for meal.
This nutrient profile means that sunflower would really complement field beans:
whereas sunflower is high in ME, beans are
low; sunflower is strong in methionine and
weaker in lysine whereas the opposite is
true for beans.
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Table 6: Opportunity cost for Sunflower
seed (£/tonne)
Diet
Full fat
trial seed
Meal
from trial
seed (oil
extracted)
Commercial
meal (oil
extracted)
Broiler
Finisher
734
381
531
Turkey
Grower
210
226
435
Chicken
Layer
303
235
337
We attempted to put an economic value
on sunflower as a feed by calculating the
opportunity cost (Table 6). We calculated
this for three diets (broiler finisher, turkey
grower and chicken layer) and for three
products: the seed from the trial adjusted
for 12 percent moisture, a hypothetical meal
from the trial after oil extraction, and a commercially available meal.
The broiler finisher diet, with its high ME
requirement, would benefit most from the
inclusion of sunflower seed. The benefit is
less clear for the other two species, although
it could have a role in layer rations due to
their higher requirements for the essential
fatty acids (a determinant of egg size) found
in the oil. If offered in least cost formulations
in conjunction with field beans or peas,
the opportunity price of each would be
increased because, as stated earlier, they
complement each other.
A more in-depth study, using several different sites and fully replicated experiments
on each location would confirm this or
otherwise. In any case there are a number of
issues that need to be tackled or considered.
• The moisture content needs to come
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Grain
down to around 12 percent, and even
in more favourable years, there is likely
to be some requirement for drying,
because the seed is harvested before it
is fully ripe
• In the context of small producers in
particular, some sort of cooperative
structure will be needed to reach the
tonnages that will justify the necessary
equipment and facilities
• The crop would also appear to be
valuable for ruminant nutrition. It also
produces a considerable amount of
stem and leaf material which could
perhaps be converted into silage.
• The unexpectedly high oil content
means that it could be economical to
extract at least a proportion of the oil.
Organic vegetable oil is in short supply
and expensive
• The material remaining after harvesting
the seed can provide green manure if
chopped and ploughed in. Sunflowers
have deep tap roots which will bring
phosphorus and potassium to the top
soil
Although there are no magic bullets
or overnight solutions to offer, there are
plenty of ideas worthy of further consideration and development. There will come
a time when the UK will have to rely
less on imports and move towards lower
carbon feed systems: that is inevitable.
The sooner we start, the less painful that
transition will be.
More
inforMstion:
www.organiccentrewales.org.uk
www. capestone.co.uk
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22.10.13 08:36

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