Optimizing nutrition for poultry is essential for health, productivity, and profit. Not all chickens have the same nutritional demands either. The needs of chickens change throughout their life stages, and a laying hen diet is different from a broiler chicken diet.
Feed particle size is also important. Particle size strikes a balance between nutrient uptake and animal health. Even when two different feeds have the same nutrient content, the particle size changes how the birds develop and grow.
What is the Best Chicken Feed for Laying Eggs?
The type of feed used for chickens depends on their life stage and purpose. For example, oats make a good feed for slow growing chickens, but it’s not an appropriate grain for adult broilers and layers due to the high fiber content.
According to K-State, corn and sorghum can be used interchangeably in a general poultry diet. The nutritional value of each is about the same, although the feed should contain a yellow pigment if it doesn’t have adequate yellow corn to give the right yolk color.
Wheat can also be used for laying hens, but it has slightly less energy than corn or sorghum, and is missing some amino acids. Experts recommend that wheat make up no more than half of a feed. Laying hen feed also contains protein, usually in the form of soybean meal.
Why is Particle Size Important for Poultry Feed?
Particle size (granulometry) is important in all animal feed. For layer chickens, it has a big impact on digestive tract development.
For example, when birds eat larger particles, they develop larger gizzards and longer intestinal tracts. The feed spends longer in the intestines, allowing the chickens to absorb more nutrients from the food they eat.
On the other hand, fine particles in chicken feed pass quickly through the gizzard and into the proventriculus. They consequently develop smaller gizzards and shorter intestines.
What is the Ideal Feed Particle Size for Layers?
Optimal feed particle size changes as layers grow and develop. As chickens get older, their preference shifts to larger particle sizes. Starters do well with a crumble, meaning particle sizes between 1 mm and 3 mm. Each crumb contains all the different components of the feed, making it an ideal delivery system for chicks.
The particle size needs to increase after the starter diet due to bird preference, and to ensure the small intestine and gizzard grow larger. For the next stage of growth, a mash is a better choice than a crumb diet. The feed should shift toward a higher proportion of 2 and 3 mm particles.
Ideally, the grower diet should be between 45% and 60% 1-2 mm particles and between 10% and 25% 2-3 mm particles. For developers, these percentages shift to 25-35% and 25-40%, respectively, plus the addition of 5-10% particles that are larger than 3 mm. Producers should have 10-15% of these larger feed particles.
Roller Mill vs. Hammer Mill – Which is Better for Consistent, Accurate Particle Size?
The particle size of animal feed depends on several factors, but milling has the biggest impact on the size of the final product. Most mills use either a hammer mill or a roller mill. Hammer mills use hammers to smash the grain, followed by screens to produce particles of different sizes.
In a roller mill, the grain moves between corrugated cylindrical rollers, and shearing action between the rollers breaks down the grain. Several factors determine particle size: the spacing between the rollers, the number of roller pairs, roller diameter, relative speed between rollers, and the pattern of the corrugation.
Because more factors can be controlled with a roller mill, it provides more uniformity and consistency in particle sizes. Hammer mills will always produce a greater range of particle sizes. Hammer mills also produce more fines, which should be minimized in chicken feed. Fines can cause respiratory harm and ulceration in the digestive tract.
Roller mills are also more energy efficient, delivering cost savings not only on feed efficiency, but also on electricity costs. Overall, they offer a better option for producing high-quality poultry feed to desired specifications.
How can we help you achieve optimal feed particle size? If you have more questions or want to learn more about how our equipment can improve your operations and product, contact us to request a quote.
