Articles & Resources

Review
Chapters in this 87-page book include: Economic background to the industry, Nutrient requirements and feed formulation, Feed ingredients: characteristics and supplies, Outline of the feed manufacturing process, and Financial appraisal of small-scale production. These chapters are well-written, short, and to-the-point.

The 40 pages of appendices are especially useful. Appendix 1, Nutrient Specifications, includes detailed tables covering poultry, pig, ruminant, rabbit, and fish feeds. Appendix 2, Feed Formulations lists typical ingredients and proportions for small feed mills in Asia and Africa as well as normal maximum limits to ingredient inclusion. Appendix 3, Composition of raw materials, presents an exhaustive listing of the percentages of various nutrients in a wide variety of possible materials (from barley and buckwheat to spent brewer's yeast and feather meal). Another table lists the typical fatty acid composition of common fats and oils and a table of toxic or undesirable factors in feed ingredients (i.e. velvet bean contains trypsin inhibitors and needs to be heated to avoid problems, shea nut cake contains saponins and should make up no more than 2.5% of a feed). Appendix 4, Feed Processing, has diagrams of typical feed mills, tables comparing motor sizes and capital costs, a table of typical bulk densities of raw materials, etc. Appendix 5, Appraisal of Small-Scale Production Projects has a checklist of information to help decide project feasibility followed by detailed working tables for full financial analysis.

We have already found this publication a great aid in answering technical requests from our network. If your work includes the manufacture of your own animal feeds from locally available materials, this book may be a good addition to your library.

Book Description
The small-scale manufacture of compound animal feed

This bulletin supersedes TDRI report G67 The small-scale manufacture of compound animal feed, which was first published in 1971. It retains a similar format to G67, but the text has been extensively revised and expanded in the light of numerous enquiries dealt with by ODNRI on all aspects of feed production in the intervening years. It is hoped that it will act as a technical and investment guide for those interested in initiating the production of compound animal feeds, as well as acting as a useful reference report for those already actively operating in this field. Chapter 1 describes the economic background to the industry; theoretical aspects of animal nutrition are dealt with in Chapter 2; these are related to the properties of the various raw materials used in feed production in Chapter 3. Chapter 4 describes the manufacturing process and examines the physical requirements for setting up plants at various scales of output, and Chapter 5 develops cost and return models for the plants described.

Thus the bulletin attempts to deal with all the principal factors relating to the establishment of compound feed production, and to provide the basis for full feasibility studies. The cost models, which are tabulated in great detail in the appendices, have been expressed both in physical and in financial terms. The former should facilitate the use of the bulletin in a variety of circumstances by enabling the insertion of local data into the models; the latter should give further guidance in that they provide a worked example using known costs for a specific developing country in Asia for which data were available.

It should be noted that this bulletin is concerned only with relatively small-scale plant. The earlier report dealt with plants having output capacities from 1 tonne per hour to 10 tonnes per hour. Since it was first published there has been a growing appreciation that, with certain exceptions, smaller plants may be more appropriate to many developing country circumstances. Consequently even smaller-scale operations than in the preceding report are included in this bulletin - these being more appropriate to home mixing on small livestock units or in village scale or small co-operative organizations. The largest plant considered has a capacity of 2 tonnes of meal/hour (approx 5,000 or 10,000 tonnes/year on single or double shift systems respectively), bringing it into the range of small-scale industrial production. Higher capacity plants are usually specifically designed and built for each customer's requirements. Nevertheless, much of the information contained in this bulletin can be adapted to assist in making a preliminary assessment of the likely feasibility of a larger scale plant.

More information on the composition and nutritive value of a wider range of raw materials has been included Its intention is to assist in the utilization of locally available raw materials including wastes and crop processing by-products. Experience has shown that limitations in the regular supply of raw materials of adequate quantity and quality form one of the major constraints on compound feed production in developing countries.