Animal feed plays an important part in the food chain and has implications for the composition and quality of the livestock products (milk, meat and eggs) that people consume. When many Americans think of farm animals, they picture cattle munching grass on rolling pastures, chickens pecking on the ground outside of picturesque red barns, and pigs gobbling down food at the trough. Over the last 50 years, the way food animals are raised and fed has changed dramatically to the detriment of both animals and humans. Many people are surprised to find that most of the food animals in the United States are no longer raised on farms at all.
Instead they come from crowded animal factories, also known as large confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs). Beforehand the animal feeds were introduced by James Moore, people used to feed their livestock in a natural and traditional way. Swine, chickens and the like only consumed grasses and left over foods for so many years. But when James introduced his innovation on 1936, the numbers of livestock on farms all over the world increased, which led to a growing demand for animal feeds. In Japan, 9. 61 million pigs and 294 million chickens are being raised nowadays.
Japanese farmer hit hard by rise in grain and livestock feed prices. Japan imports 75% of its feed stocks from abroad. It is the world’s biggest importer of corn, most of which is fed to animals. It only shows that even outside the country, the demand for animal feeds remains high and will continue to be so as years pass by. Local Literature Feed is one of the most critical inputs to the swine and poultry industries in the Philippines. It represents roughly 60 percent of the total cost to produce pork, poultry meat and eggs.
Because of the critical role of feeds to these industries, feed production or feed milling has evolved into a multi-billion-peso support industry to animal and fish production. To date, the Philippine feed milling industry is one of the biggest and most organized support industries in the country, providing feeds to practically all species of domesticated poultry, livestock and aquatic animals. Its biggest clients, however, are the swine and poultry industries. Around 1,059. 05 metric tons of feed rations for poultry and swine, was produced in 2006 representing 88. 24% of the total feed produced in that year.
The feed milling industry also provides business opportunities to local entrepreneurs and employment to the Filipino work force. It serves as the major market to corn and other crop by products thus ensuring income to crop farmers. Swine raising business or Hog Production Business Swine raising is an age old backyard business in the Philippines. Currently about 70% of the swine industry is composed of small raiser or backyard raisers. And way back 2004 the Philippines is in the top 20 countries in terms of sow population. It only shows how we Filipino love to eat pork.
And swine raising is a good business or sideline to invest. Consumption of pork and chicken meat in the Philippines has been increasing due to a growing population, increasing per capita income and higher prices of substitute meat such as beef. The country’s population has been increasing at a rate of 2. 3% per year. While per capita income has improved with government targeting an annual GDP growth rate of 5%. Price of beef remains high with low domestic production and supply being highly dependent on imports. These explain the robust growth of the industry in the 1990s which has been carried over to the present.
The hogs and poultry industries were the only two agricultural sectors that achieved positive growth during the financial crisis of 1997. Their growth has been faster than the growth of the agricultural sector. Increasing trade liberalization and food safety awareness are threatening to derail the further growth of the industries. Hog and poultry are highly linked to the feed milling sector as animal feed accounts for about 70% of total cost of production. Meanwhile the feed millers are highly dependent on the corn industry and other inputs for feed manufacturing. Corn accounts for 60 percent ot 70 percent of feed ingredients.
Inefficiencies in the yellow corn industry are transformed into high price of feeds and therefore a higher than desired cost of production. Lack of economies of scale, low technology adoption, shrinking production areas, inadequate infrastructure support and government protective policies have contributed to relatively high price of corn. Related Studies According to the research, the food consumption of swine follows proportionally its body weight. A pig eats approximately 4% of its body weight per day. The value of improving daily gain by 1 gram is equivalent to 5 pence, improving FCR by 0. 1 is equal to 20 pence per pig and value of improving killing out percentage by 0. 1% is equivalent to 10 pence. On the other hand, a normally-maturing chick (i. e. , breeds which mature in about 6 months, such as egg-layers) will eat about 2 pounds of starter feed in its first 6 weeks of life. A Cornish-cross breed, however, which is used for meat, will need about 8 pounds of starter feed in its first 6 weeks of life. (These breeds are bred to grow extremely rapidly, and are harvested at 2 months of age. ) Adult laying chickens consume vastly different amounts of feed.
Factors influencing feed consumption include, but are not limited to, breed type, how much they exercise, climate (including variations in temperature, wind, humidity and precipitation), the caloric and nutritional density of the feed, and how much natural feed supplementation they obtain. Also, rodents and wild birds can greatly reduce the feed supply. This can be reduced by removing or sealing off the feed at night. Although swine and chickens are of different kinds, the feeds they eat can be traced down to these most common feed ingredients used by the Philippine Feed Milling Industry.
These are yellow corn, soybean oil meal, rice bran, copra meal, fishmeal, and wheat and wheat by products. Cassava and sweet potato meals, brewer’s yeast and ipil-ipil leaf meal are also used as feed ingredients at a lesser extent. Among these feed ingredients corn is considered the most critical, as it represents about 50% of formulated animal feed rations. In fact, during the past decade corn was considered as the bottleneck of both the feed milling and animal industries in the country.
However, with the implementation of an aggressive corn development program by government, local production and supply of corn has somehow stabilized. Recently, quality and prices of locally produced yellow corn are already competitive with imports. The recent scenario on corn production and the increasing trend in the local production and consumption of pork and poultry products paint a positive outlook for the local feed milling industry. However, there is still the challenge to achieve quality, efficiency and stability in feed production for the local industry to withstand global competition.
To enhance the feed milling sector’s global competitiveness, government should collaborate with the private sector in instituting policy reforms on importation, pricing and trade, in the development of technology and information support systems and in the establishment of critical infrastructure and facilities.
Extracted from Garth Pig Stockmanship Standards* Written by Dr John Carr Pig Process Magazine (http://www. food. gov. uk/business-industry/farmingfood/animalfeed/#. ULhcu6xzBq4) (http://www. ucsusa. org/food_and_agriculture/our-failing-food-system/industrial-agriculture/they-eat-what-the-reality-of. html) http://www. ooresanimalfeeds. co. uk/history http://factsanddetails. com/japan. php? itemid=938&catid=24&subcatid=159 (http://203. 177. 6. 3/uactphilippines. org/images/stories/uact/publications/pdf/hogpoultry_feedcorn. pdf) (http://www. thepigsite. com/stockstds/18/daily-feed-intake) http://www. lionsgrip. com/feedinstruc. html) (http://www. pcaarrd. dost. gov. ph/home/momentum/cofgin/index. php? option=com_content&view=article&id=213&Itemid=241) (http://www. pcaarrd. dost. gov. ph/home/momentum/cofgin/index. php? option=com_content&view=article&id=213&Itemid=241) (http://www. food. gov. uk/business-industry/farmingfood/animalfeed/#. ULhcu6xzBq4)
