Nutritive evaluation of cold-pressed meals for broiler chickens

The cost of feed represents 60-70% of the cost of production for most classes of poultry. The poultry industry needs to be poised to take advantage of feed ingredients from new and existing crops to be able to efficiently manage feed costs. To do so, usable nutrient composition of these feed ingredients must be available to enable their incorporation into diets. By-product supplements developed from oilseeds used for the biodiesel industry have potential to be used as alternative protein and energy sources for poultry giving the industry feeding alternatives. Based on the economic value of the oils for biofuels, cold-pressing of the oilseeds to produce meals that contain higher residual oil may provide cost-effective alternatives to current oil extraction procedures. Current increases in production of canola and other oilseed crops such as soybeans, camelina, and carinata, potentially provide a variety of feed ingredients in quantities beneficial for use in poultry feeds. The proposed study will evaluate meals produced from the processing of oilseeds such as canola, soybeans, camelina and carinata. Nutrient profiles will be determined for cold-pressed meals made from canola, soybean, camelina and carinata oilseeds. Strategies to enhance utilization of these products through heat treatment and dietary enzyme addition will also be investigated. The development of a database for broiler chickens will allow for more efficient diet formulation. Values determined for the test ingredients will be used to formulate starter, grower, and finisher broiler chicken diets to evaluate the effects of the cold-pressed meals on growth performance. Nutrient composition values determined not only for ingredients typically used in Canadian poultry diets but also ingredients being developed in Canada would further improve the efficiency of feed formulation for broilers and subsequent growth performance of the birds and potentially increase returns for the producer. The Canadian poultry industry will benefit by having access to a nutrient database for cost-effective alternative feed ingredients which will facilitate the formulation of lower cost diets and potentially result in improved feed conversion.