Feed for your needs is the golden rule of phase feeding. Phase feeding is a term used to describe the practice of feeding different diets over shorter periods to meet the nutrient requirements of your animals more accurately.

Due to an increase in raw material costs over the years, there is an increased focus on farming more efficiently. One way to achieve this is through precision feeding. Feeding a diet that meets the requirements of the animal at a specific time, will reduce the cost of feed over the production period and also allow the animal to grow to its full genetic potential.

When you only feed one or two diets for an entire production period, you will be overfeeding or underfeeding the animal for most of the production cycle. This is illustrated in Figure 1. The red line indicates the nutrient requirements of the bird (in this example – lysine) over time. The green line is the lysine supplied by the diet when one diet is fed.

The shaded area indicates when the bird is underfed, or overfed on lysine. Usually in this case, you are restricting performance during the starter phase, which will have an effect on the entire production cycle, and overfeeding at the finisher phase, which adds unnecessary feed costs to production.

When we overfeed nutrients to an animal, it is not only costly, but it can also be harmful to the animal. Excess nutrients that are not utilised by the animal will end up in the lower digestive system and may lead to harmful microbial growth, leading to dysbacteriosis.

Excess nutrients such as nitrogen will also be released into the environment, leading to excess ammonia build-up and air pollution. Underfeeding nutrients will inhibit the animal to reach its genetic potential.

The bird has a specific nutrient requirement for maintenance, and for production. Nutrients are first used for maintenance, and thereafter additional nutrients are used for production. Figure 2 illustrates what it looks like when feeding several diets. It is clear that compared to Figure 1, there are fewer days when the animal is either underfed or overfed, thus feeding more closely to the nutrient requirements of the animal.

It is important to note that as an animal becomes older, the requirement for energy increases, while the requirement for protein and amino acids decreases. This is why starter feeds often have higher protein levels than finisher feeds.

Following the feeding guidelines of the feed company will help you to farm more efficiently and, in the end, it will increase the profitability of the business.

You can contact Wiehan Visagie at wiehan.visagie@novatek.co.zm or Marné Visagie at nutritionist@novatek.co.zm for any information on feeding and feeds.