Norel develops energy source for broilers

Using dry fat in broiler nutrition has several advantages such as easy storage and handling. Also, it allows the fat content to be increased in the diet without the negative effects of liquid oils.

However, digestibility of dry fats can be reduced, especially in young birds when they are fed with hydrogenated fats. Spanish animal nutrition company, Nore,l has developed Polyfat, a calcium salt of palm fatty acid distillate (PFAD), soft oil and soya oil, in order to provide the birds with a more digestible dry fat.

Indeed, Polyfat contains more than 57% of unsaturated fatty acids: Oleic (C18:1) 33.4%, Linoleic (C18:2) 17.6 %, and Linolenic (C18:3) 6.3%. An experiment was conducted at the Animal Production Research Institute (Egypt) under the supervision of Prof. Nasef Z. Bolous. The objective of the trial was to evaluate the performances of broilers receiving three different sources of fats (soybean oil, Polyfat, or a mix of both) with or without addition of emulsifiers.

The feeds were based on corn and soya and levels of fat sources were adjusted to achieve the same energy level among treatments in both grower and finisher diets. Results indicate that better growth and FCR were obtained with the combination soybean oil + Polyfat, followed by Polyfat alone, while soybean oil gave the lowest performance. The same ranking was observed for feed costs and economic efficiency (Net revenue per chick divided by total feed cost per chick), concluding that Polyfat can be an efficient energy source for broilers.

Source: Norel