Producers of feed products, no matter how well prepared, can always be faced with unexpected events that disrupt or even derail the production process. Weather conditions, for example, often dictate the quality of ingredients and subsequently also the composition of feed recipes and the diet of the animals.
Climate as a gamechanger
In a November article on the FeedNavigator website, Aerin Einstein-Curtis writes how recently, wet spring weather in the US caused a delay in the harvest of several crops. This delay lead to a decline in the crop yield quality, meaning that specific feed fails to deliver the necessary nutrient quantity to animals.
Einstein-Curtis interviewed Keith Johnson, professor of agronomy and extension forage specialist with Purdue University. He warned producers, especially in the US’ Midwest, to be aware of this concern. Johnson further mentions how insufficient nutrient intake might lead to a change in animal body condition, potentially causing a whole string of negative effects such as general weakness, poor conception and poor lactation. These problems could become reality in 2020 and even 2021. A pro-active approach by feed producers and farmers is required.
Link quality control with ration balancing software
The article explains how the preferred and most cost-effective measure is testing the quality of all the different forages and hay used in feed products. A greater understanding of the forage quality and nutrient content allows producers to better allocate higher quality feeds when nutritional needs are high, without using additional feed supplementation. A detailed quality analysis also assists nutritionists to balance a least-cost ration by offering advice on which inexpensive feed ingredients can be used to balance energy and protein needs in feed products for production of milk or meat.
The BESTMIX® Sample Basket for efficient quality control
BESTMIX® is Adifo's software solution for feed formulation and ration calculation. BESTMIX® contains a Sample Basket that automatically connects user facilities with different labs and allows easy and powerful sample processing. Effectively using quality data is crucial to calculate and formulate least-cost but high-quality rations.
The Sample Basket eliminates the strenuous task of manually implementing lab data that is derived from samples. The basket is situated in the cloud and directly accessible by labs, advisors and farmers. A wide selection of labs currently collaborates, such as Eurofins, Rock River, Dairyland Lab, DairyOne, Agri Analyse, CVAS, ServiTech, Masterlab and Nutriopt so far with still more to come. There are many benefits to working with the Sample Basket. It saves time and costs, allows both farmers and advisors to work more efficiently and lets users process more samples in less time. Additionally, the Sample Basket lets users process multiple advanced samples, take averages, exclude certain samples etc.
BESTMIX® for quality control in the feed industry
The Sample Basket is one of multiple solutions that takes care of manufacturers' quality control processes. BESTMIX® Quality Control is Adifo's centralized platform for quality data storage. External and internal data from sampling and quality checks is stored here directly, providing users with a single source of truth. BESTMIX® Formulation as a Service on the other hand is a cloud-based platform that simplifies the data interchange and improves the overall contact between formulators, nutritionists and feed advisors. The Sample Basket easily imports quality data into BESTMIX® Quality Control, which can later be shared with all relevant parties through the BESTMIX® Formulation as a Service cloud platform. Rely on feed formulation software that assits in the entire production of feed products.
Rely on BESTMIX® to do the job.