Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
10
Model Applications in Poultry
Production and Nutrition
E.O. Oviedo-Rondón*
North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina, USA
Abstract
Mathematical models have been developed in the past few decades to aid in decision making, management,
research and teaching in many aspects of animal and poultry production. These are very useful tools that
can offer a wide vision of complex problems common in enterprise process management, processing, live
production and nutrition of animals to assist in developing solutions. Despite the advantages of using
modelling approaches, many factors have limited their broad application in commercial poultry produc-
tion. Currently, very few poultry companies and nutritionists worldwide use biological models on a daily
basis. Modelling techniques are not even taught in animal and poultry nutrition classes in all universities.
Because of this, it is very difficult for these excellent tools to advance sufficiently to benefit the poultry
industry. This chapter will enumerate some of the main advances that have been made in the different
categories of mathematical modelling that have been developed for poultry nutrition, production and pro-
cessing. These include applications developed to model growth and egg production of birds and the whole
poultry enterprise. Additionally, some of the limitations in terms of common knowledge, training and
data availability needed to apply modelling to commercial conditions will be discussed. The objectives of
this chapter are: (i) to highlight the importance of modelling for advancing the acquisition of information
for decision making related to the intricate and critical problems often observed in poultry production and
nutrition; (ii) to list and briefly describe some of the current applications; and (iii) to identify factors that
need to be improved to enable greater use under commercial conditions and in research. This author does
not intend to criticize any of these models, since most have not yet been fairly evaluated.
been used. Mathematical modelling includes
a very broad set of tools that have not yet been
completely explored for use in poultry nutri-
tion, production and processing (Roush, 2001,
2006; Render
et al
., 2011). The following is a list
of the mathematical methods that could be
utilized as modelling techniques:
Introduction
Modelling is conducted to better understand,
quantify and optimize systems. Modelling can
be conducted at different levels, from cells
to organs, animals to flocks, flocks to farms,
farms to companies. At each one of these
levels, different modelling techniques could
be applied and, in fact, very few tools have
• Statistical analysis.
• Decision analysis.
