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Feed formulation software

A review for ruminant, aquatic and poultry

by Dr Pratiksha Saxena Department of Applied Mathematics

and Dr Rajkumar, Gautam Buddha University, India

he livestock and animal industries are

important parts of a countrys economy.
A number of industries ranging in
size are based on animals and animal
products. Development of these
industries is directly dependent on the
animals diets.
The ingredients in the form of food
consumed by animals on daily basis, are
termed as an animal ration or animal feed. Formulation of animal
ration is a process that involves combining different nutrient
ingredients in such an efficient manner to provide sufficient

38 | October 2015 - Milling and Grain

amounts of energy and nutrition to animals at different stages of

metabolism and production.
This article presents a summary of feed formulation software.
Content is divided into three categories: for aquatic animals,
for poultry and for ruminants. A description and comparison of
various software is provided, explaining the features and uses of
each software.

Feed formulation

Animal ration should be formulated in such a way to fulfill the

energy requirements of animals. This is one of the basic needs of
livestock management and for industries based on animal yields.
Different kinds of animals have various energy requirements

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optimisation models had been used over 100 years ago.
These optimisation models are used in such a way to provide
information on energy requirements at different stages for
growth, reproduction, metabolism and lactation at optimum cost.
To formulate an animal feed, knowledge of basic animal
nutrition, the nutrition levels of feed ingredients, feed
composition, as well as mathematical programming techniques
are important.

Feed analysis

Analysing feeds is an important part of diet formulation as

different kinds of available feedstuffs vary in composition. A
balanced diet is the term given to a feed which provides all
necessary nutrition to an animal and should simulate feeding
behaviours.
Animal feed should be formulated in such a way that it is highly
digestible whilst causing the least amount of environmental
damage.
Initially, a variety of methods were used for feed analysis, such
as the trial and error method, linear programming methods and
other conventional methods. As time passed different forms of
mathematical programming were used for better results, methods
such as stochastic programming, goal programming and other
non-linear programming techniques.
Manual calculations and applications are time consuming,
tedious and prone to errors. As the number of feed ingredients
increase, the complexity of feed formulation models also
increase. In this era of technology, specifically designed software
and computers are used for this purpose, providing more accurate
results for a larger number of variables in less time.
These days it is common to formulate feed for commercial
purposes using software. This software is well programmed to
compute the nutrient profile of a feed, to access a feed library and
to apply this to a feed formulation.

Software for aquatic feeds

according to their age, reproduction and metabolism.

It is a very important to formulate the animal feed efficiently
to meet the animals specific requirements at a particular age
and stage of life. Feed formulation encompasses selecting a
combination of feed ingredients that adequately meet the required
nutrition and other requirements of animals at different stages of
life.
In addition to this, cost is also an important factor for any
industry. The main objective of ration formulation is to provide
a satisfactory nutrient level for a specific animal species whilst
minimising cost.
In order to achieve this, mathematical techniques and

Diet Formulator Program has been developed to formulate the

feed for freshwater and marine finfish and shrimp. It is not based
on least-cost diet formulation program, but rather a simple excelbased diet calculation program.
The user selects ingredients and the program calculates the
nutritional information of the formulated diet. The program also
allows the user to insert other ingredients for a chemical analysis.
Ingredient costs can be entered in the database and the program
will calculate the ingredient cost of the diet formulation.
Fishfarm Solutions is a program designed for simple rations
on the basis of Pearson square ration formulation. Nutrient
contents of ingredients and nutrient requirements are expressed
on the same basis.
This excel sheet formulator needs a comprehensive list of all
the feed ingredients with their protein levels as inputs. Then
according to the required quantity of feed, it combines different
kinds of ingredients from the list.
Winfeed formulates diet for ruminants, non-ruminants, poultry,
pets and fish. It is based on linear and stochastic programming. It
can work with an unlimited number of ingredients and nutrients.
It is user friendly software which also calculates marginal price,
shadow price and assists with cost analysis. It is compatible
with excel and can import or export data for feed formulation. It
also provides graphical reports in the form of pie charts and bar
graphs.

Software for poultry

Poultry Feed Formulation is freely available software and

from the year 2014 it is also available as an android application.
Milling and Grain - October 2015 | 39

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Features include broiler feed and layer feed formulation
information. Ration is divided for four broiler stages: starter,
grower, finisher one and finisher two.
Layer feed formulation is divided into seven stages: starter,
grower, developer, prelay, peak, layer one and layer two. This is
user-friendly software that allows the user to edit, save, email as
well has having the ability to print the output formulations. Any
user input errors are highlighted if variables are not in the range
of a breeds requirement.
Kasturi is poultry management software that manages feed
formulation for layers, hatchery, and broilers. Covering all
aspects of the hatchery, from housing of newly born chicks to
egg laying birds, setting of eggs, to hatching of chicks. Kasturi
keeps a record of daily events such as mortalities, culls, feed
consumption rates and type of feeds being used.
It can formulate the feed, analyse nutrients, temperature,
humidity, light, body weight, uniformity and vaccination
schedule. It can generate several types of reports on medication,
vaccinations, sales, purchases, stocks and monthly performance
among other options.
Ration Formula Express (RFE) for poultry produced by
VETSOFT Software Corporation is a program based on least
cost feed formulation. This poultry management program uses
operation research techniques to formulate the least cost ration
depending on the requirements of breed and prices of ingredients.
RFE has bilingual language capabilities for English and Arabic. It
is based on feed composition according to NRC 1994.
It also takes care of shadow price and provides results in the
form of comparable decision sheets and graphs. These display the
ration formula ingredient quantities, a nutrients analysis, as well
as nutrients constraints and requirements.

Software for ruminants

Feedlive is used to formulate diet for swine, sheep, poultry

and other animals. It is based on least cost formulation and linear
programming. A special feature of this software is that it accumulates
data on mono and polygastic animal feeds all into one place. It is a
MS windows application that can formulate feed for any batch size.
Feedlive has the ability to analyse an existing formula, functioning in a
backward operation.
- Feedsoft Feedsoft cloud formulation is a platform, which
provides live statistics to individuals or small size companies with
general formulation needs. It can also modify all nutrient data easily
via its nutrient editor screen. Feedsoft is a user-friendly interface
that is assessable via mobile phone.
- Spesfeed software is for poultry and other animals. It supplies and
supports two different feed formulation systems Spesfeed Express and
Format International, each offer their own advantages. Spesfeed Express
is a small user friendly system, limited to a single user, it has a restricted
amount of nutrient data that can be considered. Format International has a
wide range of software. It caters for large and sophisticated users. Features
include a multi-user system which allows the manipulation of large data
bases, multi-mix and global-mix formulation.
FeedMU is a simple feed formulation program, which uses the trial
and error method, and linear programming to produce a least cost feed
formula. It can be used for simple feed in animal farms and complex
feeds in feed mill.
It is a MS Windows based application developed using Visual Basic
and .NET application for feed formulation. FeedMU uses information
on animals requirements, ingredient details and feed composition
to formulate a well balanced diet. It has a function to transfer
requirements and ingredients data to others and it can export formula
reports in PDF format.

T u r n k ey
Feed Mill
Systems
Gear Driven Pellet Mill
w w w. y e m t a r. c o m
40 | October 2015 - Milling and Grain

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