Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Incremental use
The main causes of reduced feed efficiency
were incorrect feed budget, diets too low in
nutrient density, too much feed wastage,
health concerns and various combinations
of these causes. A summary of the solutions
associated with each possible constraining
factor is shown in
Table 11.6.
Changing the health status and/or feed
wastage required either long-term adjust-
ments to their biosecurity programme or
purchasing new feeders, which were then
considered by the producer to be out of scope.
Attention was focused on manipulating the
feed budget and increasing the amino acid to
energy ratio of the diets to meet the goal of
improving feed efficiency and reducing feed
costs. Watson
®
predicted an improvement in
feed:gain of -0.05 g/g and a potential reduc-
tion in feed costs of $0.80/pig when changing
both the nutrient composition and amount of
each phase diet. These predicted changes
were validated in a controlled study where
the existing nutrition programme (diet and
feed budget) was compared with two alterna-
tive treatments (same diets, different budget,
and different diet, different budget). The re-
sults are shown in
Table 11.7
.
When the model is used at a local level to help
a customer, there is a general approach that is
adopted. Typically this process would involve:
(i) identifying the customer's objective(s) and
decide whether Watson
®
is the appropriate
tool; (ii) collecting as much production and
farm specific data as required; (iii) initializing
Watson
®
, including simulations to define the
baseline farm performance; (iv) diagnosing
opportunities for improvement by simulating
appropriate scenarios; (v) deriving solutions
to defined objective(s); and (vi) if possible,
validating solutions with on-farm testing. The
following examples illustrate the incremental
usage of Watson
®
to derive optimum nutri-
tional solutions for specific scenarios.
Improve feed efficiency
A large customer wanted to improve feed ef-
ficiency and reduce feed costs to improve
their profit margin. To address this issue,
Watson
®
was used first as a diagnostic tool
to identify possible causes, and second to
highlight the opportunity for improvement.
Table 11.6.
Predicted relative improvements in performance and feed costs after changing certain production
characteristics (from Nutreco Canada, 2007, unpublished data).
Factors that were changed (gains relative to current programme)
Actual
Predicted
Feed budget
Diet + budget
Reduce feed waste
Improve health
ADG, g/day
767
769
+2
+8
0
+50
ADFI, kg/day
2.29
2.28
-0.01
-0.02
-0.03
+0.05
Feed:gain
2.29
2.96
-0.02
-0.05
-0.02
-0.08
Cost/kg gain ($/kg)
0.61
0.61
0
-0.01
-0.01
-0.02
Feed costs ($/pig)
52.5
52.8
-0.21
-0.80
-0.49
-0.80
ADG = average daily gain; ADFI = average daily feed intake.
Table 11.7.
Actual vs predicted relative improvements to performance and feed costs after changing the
feed budget and diet + feed budget. (From Nutreco Canada, 2007, unpublished data.)
Predicted (commercial conditions)
Actual (research conditions)
Feed budget
Diet + budget
Feed budget
Diet + budget
ADG, g/day
+2
+8
+1
+8
ADFI, kg/day
-0.01
-0.02
-0.05
-0.05
Feed:gain
-0.02
-0.05
-0.06
-0.07
Cost/kg gain ($/kg)
0
-0.01
-0.07
-0.09
Feed costs ($/pig)
-0.21
-0.80
-0.51
-0.66
