With the use of Net Energy values in feed formulation, up to 30% energy can be saved in poultry diets. And calculation of these values can now be easily done with Nestor, a new tool developed by Adisseo. “There is simply nothing to lose, only to win”, according to poultry experts.
The global animal nutrition industry is moving rapidly towards precision feeding. And this is all about retrieving the most accurate nutritional values to better match the needs and better predict how animals react to the formulated diets. Having the most accurate data available is crucial in times with high raw materials prices and the increased use of by-products and alternative feed ingredients in poultry diets. Wasting or overfeeding nutrients only makes the feed costs rise. And energy is one of the most important parameters of the diet. In this article we explain the benefits of using Net Energy values over Metabolisable Energy values to better predict poultry performance and optimise broiler diets and production efficiency.
Protein, fat and starch all provide energy to the animal, for maintenance, growth (meat) and eggs. These nutritional values can be based on feed tables or feed analysis (such as NIR). But the Crude Protein levels don’t reflect the true protein level that is available for the animal. The same is true for using Gross Energy (GE) as a measurement for the available energy for the bird. Over the years, we have made significant steps to make these values more accurate. We moved to metabolisable energy (ME) in poultry feed formulation for instance and use digestible amino acids instead of crude protein. ME is the amount of energy in the feed minus the energy lost in the faeces and urine. But the heat production through digestive and metabolic processes (the so-called heat increment), is still not included in this value. To be more precise and not overfeed valuable nutrients, it is recommended to make the next accuracy step and use the Net Energy (NE) values. NE values don’t have to be measured, they can be calculated from the ME values. The transformation of GE to NE can be described by three steps as shown in Figure 1 below.
In the feed industry, all sorts of energy evaluation systems are used, and using NE values is not something new. These values are common in pig feed formulation for many years already and widely adopted in (mainly) Europe. The reason for adoption by the swine sector has been spurred by the competitiveness and the introduction of more by-products in swine diets in the 80s and 90s (that often come with variable nutritional values, hence the demand for accurate energy values). Ever since, the use of NE values in swine has been successful and shown to be valuable, validated and robust. The incentive to move to NE in poultry nutrition was never there, as poultry diets are considered more traditional and based on only a few ingredients such as corn, wheat and soybean meal. Using ME values has always been the default and considered ‘good enough’. Yet, with the high feed prices and more different feed ingredients used and available for poultry, we have to be more accurate. With NE values we can increase poultry performance and reduce feed costs to remain profitable and competitive. Adisseo, global leader in animal nutrition solutions, backs the adoption of using NE values for poultry and dedicated a full day to this topic during the World’s Poultry Congress 2022 (WPC) in Paris. During live round table discussions with global poultry experts, a practical demo on how to calculate NE values and a Q&A session, this new topic for poultry nutrition was put in the spotlight for the global poultry community.
The benefits of using the NE system is that it is the most efficient system to address nutritional value of feedstuffs as well as expressing the animal requirements. “NE values are more accurate values and allow us to lower feed costs and better predict the responses of the animal to diet changes”, Professor Mingan Choct from the University of New England in Armidale, Australia addressed at the WPC. “If you look at the energy flows, there are energy losses with each step. From GE to ME there is 30% energy loss, but from ME and NE there is another 20-30% loss of energy. We cannot continue to afford this. We also see differences in heat loss for different feed ingredients. This is why the NE values are so important. It is the most accurate way to rank and use our feed ingredients. There is simply nothing to lose to formulate poultry diets according to NE values. But it takes time to adapt”, Prof. Choct said. Professor Shu-Biao Wu, affiliated with the same University has been working on NE equations for different feed ingredients used in broiler and layer diets for quite some time and said: “NE values have been used in pigs and ruminant nutrition for many years. It is simply more accurate to assess the growth of the animals, so why not use it in poultry? This is why we worked on more data around heat increment in poultry, that allow us to create the equation to measure NE values in poultry”. Jean Noblet, one of the founding fathers of NE application in swine nutrition and ex-INRA explained: “Convincing the swine industry to NE was rather easy in most countries, as it was easy to implement and allowed the push for low protein diets for example, which was high on the agenda regarding nitrogen losses. Now it is time for poultry because poultry diets are getting more diverse as well in terms of ingredients used”.
More available equations for heat increment in poultry and long-standing knowledge on feed formulation and precision nutrition allowed Adisseo to develop an online tool (called Nestor) to provide recommendations for NE for poultry and swine, alongside recommendations on digestible amino acids and minerals. These are presented in the online service, based on specific conditions (rearing period, sex, age, breed) that is added by the user. The calculated nutritional values, including NE, can hence be downloaded as PDF or csv file to hence upload the data in feed formulation software and update the matrix values. Pierre-André Geraert, Director of Scientific Marketing at Adisseo explains: “We want to make it easier for nutritionists to work with NE values, so we created this easy to use tool. But we understand that change doesn’t come overnight and formulators have to become more familiar with the values and do the exercise. Are they lower or higher than the energy values I used to work with and what are the differences in the diets regarding nutritional values and type of ingredients? It is a different mindset that needs time and education”. Jaap van Milgen, Scientific Research Director at INRA addressed that “nowadays it is much easier to work with NE values as we can calculate them from the ME values”. According to Céline Gras, feed formulation expert at Adisseo, the NE calculations in Nestor show clear consequences in feed formulation and provide a new hierarchy of feed ingredients in terms of energy and protein (see Figure 2). “When we run different formulations with NE values and different price scenarios for energy and protein we see a shift in ratio of ingredients and inclusion rates of these ingredients in the formulation. In the worst case, using NE values leads to similar feed cost, compared to ME calculations. But feed cost savings per tonne of feed can be significant and using NE allows us to include more raw materials”.
Today’s challenges require precision feeding and there is a real demand in the market for more information on using NE values. Energy is one of the key (and most expensive) parameters in diet formulation, which makes the importance of having a net energy system even bigger. Global poultry experts fully agree: NE is the most efficient system to address nutritional value of feedstuffs as well as expressing the animal requirements. The NE system is therefore an accurate predictor of poultry performance and the next big leap we can make in poultry feed formulation. There is simply nothing to lose, only to win. “We have been talking about NE in swine for 30 years already. For poultry, we have only been talking about this topic in the last 5 years. So there is a gap in knowledge and experience we have available for poultry. The information for NE application in poultry diets has just been scarce, but more information is now getting available and we are learning how it works in practice. So, “the momentum is here to start using it actively in poultry feed formulation. At the same time, we also applaud wider adoption of the NE system for swine in regions such as Brazil, North America and Asia. NE is simply the most appropriate system, and the appropriate moment is now”, Pierre-André concluded.
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