Ration planning tools (Deliverable 4.3 OK-Net EcoFeed Project)

Summary

This deliverable is part of the Horizon 2020 project – OK-Net EcoFeed. The overall aim of OK-Net EcoFeed is to help farmers, breeders and the organic feed processing industry in achieving the goal of 100% use of organic and regional feed for monogastrics, in particular pigs, broilers, laying hens and parents of broilers and laying hens. The aim of “Work package 4 (WP4)- Evaluation of existing tools and development of new tools” is to collect and prepare end-user materials and develop new tools adapted to the needs of farmers, feed processors and breeders and helping to solve the challenge of organic and regional feed for monogastrics. The specific objectives of WP4 are to collect, evaluate and describe existing tools and end-user material, translate and adapt most promising tools, create fact sheets and videos and develop ration-planning tools for pigs, broilers and laying hens.
This deliverable reports about the development of the ration planning tool to help farmers to calculate animal’s diet at farm scale. In particular, organic data are collected to propose the table with nutritional value of organic feedstuffs and animal requirement taking into account specific parameters of organic production (e.g. extensive livestock with longer growing period for pigs and broilers). Several feeds formulation software packages were reviewed to evaluate their use and limitations. Recommendations on organic animal nutrients requirement for swine and poultry were obtained from three countries (France, Germany, and Switzerland) and calculations were made to provide the total and digestible amino acids where applicable. The nutrient composition data of organic feedstuffs ingredients were obtained from an organic table made by AFZ (Association Française de Zootechnie) and ITAB while other data were obtained from Feed-table (INRA), Feedipedia, and other literature. Two feed planning packages were made for organic poultry and swine, respectively. The data were simplified to enable farmers to use the ration planning tool without extensive knowledge of feed formulation software packages. For this purpose, the tools outputs were made in charts that could be easily interpretated.