Poultry Feed Production

6 min reading

There are two methods to be used for pellet feed production. One of them is adopted depending on many issues such as the structure of pellet mill, type of feeds and the status of raw materials.

B. H. Khaled - Production Manager, El-Nahar Feed Mill

Many times we remember our childish memories when our mothers and grands were breeding poultry birds such as chickens, ducks and turkeys at home in backyards and on rooftops. Now we realize that it was a simple breeding method, and their feed depended on grains such as corn, wheat and sometimes our leftovers.

This simple breeding production was only for domestic consumption, and there were no cost calculations. With the increase in our life standards, food behavior and enormous consumption of meats, particularly poultry meats such as chickens; it became necessary to fulfill this gap between the high consumption and insufficient production.

Geneticists revealed a research that suggests producing a new species of chicken with high productivity in a short time with breeding it for about 35 days from hatching until selling it with a weight of 2-2.5 kg. Thus, feed with essential needs have to be offered for these species.

At first, poultry feed in breeding farms was a mix of smashed and grinded grains and some additives such as salt, lime stone and calcium phosphate to improve the growth of skeleton and muscles. And the birds have been fed on soft and mash form.

With further research about feeding behavior of poultry species, scientists have found that mash feed doesn`t provide the birds with its needs such as protein and calories to grow up in the optimum time interval. More importantly, there is a big loss of feed gone in ground and degraded causing ammonia (NH3) that affects the bird wellbeing.

At last, scientists came with an idea: Pelletizing the mash feed could preclude that loss of mash form and solve the problems connected with it.

At first, the pelletizing operation started without steam, thus its productivity was low and it was costly. After that, using steam helped to maximize the production and enhanced the ability of pellet press machines to produce larger amounts in a shorter time when compared to the past.

PELLET FEED PRODUCTION Production of pellet feed is not as easy as one may think, however it is not very complicated either. We can explain it starting from receiving the material, until packing the pellets.

At first, after receiving the material and storing it in silos for corn and soybean meal and other materials, there is two ways to start with. First one is weighing each and every material individually on big scale for 1-2 tons more or less, and after that grinding all materials before mixing with additives. This operation offers a pre-mixing step that enhances the mixing operation after that.

The second one is grinding each material and storing them in silos and then weighing materials to make a complex and then mix it with additives in the mixer.

There is no big difference between the abovementioned two methods, and adopting one of them depends on many issues such as the structure of pellet mill, type of feeds and the status of raw materials.

After weighing, the entire complex will be mixed in a mixer that offers high efficiency of mixing the complex with homogeneity of higher than 95%.

There are various methods for the mixing step depending on additives during the mixing process.

When the manufacturer decides to add oil in the complex, it would be while mixing inside the mixer with a pump of oil and separators attached on the mixer. Together with this adding phase, the mixing period would last more than 60 seconds distributed among dry mixing, adding, and wet mixing.

Dry mixing is supposed to last about 20 seconds and it means that mixing the materials and dry additives before adding any soluble in order to prevent any absorption of liquids by powder additives because it this would decrease the efficiency of mixing.

After dry mixing, oil pumping starts. It lasts about 10-20 seconds depending on the amount of oil and the pump.

Sometimes it may be necessary to add another soluble for special needs in the quality of final product such as durability and humidity. Some nutritional additives such as liquid methionine or betaine, etc. may also be added. When the manufacturer decides to add one or many of these additives, he should increase the mixing duration in order to give a separate mixing time interval for each additive with total complex before adding another additive. Total mixing period shouldn’t exceed 120 seconds for the purpose of preventing any material isolation that decreases the homogeneity of the mix.

After mixing, the entire complex is conveyed to silos above the pellet press machine and becomes ready for pelletizing.

The pelletizing phase as indicated before should be with steam which is produced by boilers.

Steam pressure of boilers should be 6-8 bars, and before mixing with the material it should be reduced to 1.5-2 bars by using specific reducers. On the line of steam, there are traps for water carried on steam. It’s very important to filter the steam and extract water out of it, and keep it as dry as possible in order to prevent any mass stuck due to the water of steam.

Pressing machine composition consists of rolls and a ring die. There are many designs for this machine such as 3 or 4 rolls inside a ring die. However the most common type is 2 rolls inside a ring die.

When feed materials drop inside the die, both of two rolls push it inside the die holes to shape it in the pellet form and then cutting it with knife in opposite of the die track to cut pellets at the desired length.

The distance between the rolls and the die should be around 3mm and a thick die is better than the thin one because it gives more time to shape the pellets and make it harder to give good durability more than 80% and less fine backs to pellet press silo to repress it.

After the pressing step, pellets drop to the cooler to decrease the temperature of cooked mash feed 75-85°c for room temperature+3-5°c.

After the cooling phase, the final product would be sifted on sifters with 2-3 layers and various diameters for each layer with the purpose of extracting fine and any other big undesirable pieces and then sending the final product ready for packing in packs or containers.

After this quick review for the development of feed production we have to own a conviction that this industry has a great input to offer healthy and tasty poultry meat for consumers, and also made the business of poultry breeding farms easy and profitable.