April Trade Shows and Meetings Recap
The Barentz Poultry team had a very busy and exciting April attending multiple conferences and trade shows. Not only are these events a great place to catch up with colleagues and customers, but they also provide insight into recent findings from industry nutritionists, producers, and researchers.
Midwest Poultry Federation PEAK Recap
The Barentz Poultry team, along with our Kolin Plus partners, Natural Remedies, had a great time attending PEAK April 13-16. We were able to connect with customers, present new findings on our products, as well as meet with attendees to discuss our product portfolio and figure out potential ways of working together. We had great conversations about the state of the turkey and laying hen markets, opportunities for advancements in both industries, and potential research collaborations in the future. Barentz always strives to be a great partner and provide a better solution, and trade shows like PEAK are the perfect opportunity to connect with nutritionists and producers to work towards the common goal of making production more economically, socially, and environmentally sustainable.
Alabama Feed and Grain Nutrition Conference Recap
The conference committee put together a great program that covered topics from new enzyme strategies, new models for predicting body composition in laying hens, opportunities for advancement in feed mills, how vendors and nutritionists can work together for a great partnership, and new ways of thinking about how we feed broilers and breeders. Barentz team members also attended the Alabama Feed and Grain Nutrition Conference in Huntsville, AL from April 28-30th.
Dr. Jarred Oxford from Cargill talked about the importance of proper body composition in layers and how optimal body composition will lead to sustained performance as birds get older. The main way of evaluating body composition in laying hens is through abdominal fat pad amount, which tends to decrease with age. When fat pad amount is too high or low, it negatively impacts performance. A new, non-invasive NIR technology is designed to measure abdominal fat pads and create more data points without sacrificing birds to help nutritionists make immediate decisions to improve production and feed for persistence.
Brad Tipton from Pilgrim’s discussed opportunities for improvements and advancements in feed mills, including having adequate protocols to ensure correct formulas, validation, ways to decrease contamination, and ensuring proper mixer uniformity and pellet quality. Dr. Mathis from Southern Poultry Research group presented on ways that coccidiosis and necrotic enteritis can decrease bird performance, mainly through the worsened absorption of key nutrients due to improper gastrointestinal tract health.
We also had the opportunity to hear from three industry nutritionists about their perspectives on partnerships, opportunities they have discovered through internal research, and the future of poultry nutrition. Dr. Rocky Lathan from Tyson foods gave his insights into what makes a good partner and some of Tyson’s key principles. He stressed the importance of working together to figure out solutions and supporting the company to assist them in addressing challenges head on. Dr. J.T. Pope from House of Raeford gave an extremely interesting presentation on his findings on how to optimize breeder and broiler quality. One of the main issues he noticed in breeder houses was pullets didn’t all have room to eat at the same time feeders went off. The solution to this problem was presentation feeding, where birds will be at feeders when feed comes out, but barriers will be in place and only lifted when each hen has a spot, similar to a plated food service at a wedding. J.T. also showed data on blend feeding vs phase feeding broilers, and potential for sorting houses based on chick quality at the hatchery. Finally, Dr. Wicker finished the seminar by telling his story on how far poultry nutrition has advanced, and the direction he believes it is going with new technology, better data, and precision production.
Overall, this was a fantastic conference that allows our team members to stay up to date on the latest findings in poultry research.