Issue No: 12
1. Breeder Market to Commercial Production
2. Conference in China
3. Roche Nutrafacts and Feed Mixing Accuracy
4. Cutting the Costs of Production
5. New Slaughter Plant in Alberta, Canada
1. Breeder Market to Commercial Production
Over the past decade, a disturbing trend is noticeable as countries come to the end of their breeder market.
While visiting a country at the end of their breeder market last week, I talked with producers experiencing the same situation that has been the case in many countries before them. Birds are being purchased off farm for less than the costs of production, with payment made on a Liveweight basis. We were told of producers letting the birds leave the farm and in some cases no payment forthcoming. Producers find themselves with no market and glad to get birds "off the feed bill". Once in this position, they fall prey to these operators who are looking for quick gain rather than sustainable growth. Many producers are forced to leave the industry having lost a great deal of money when this point is reached.
These birds will all be very different in quality and are taken to a multi-specie, inexperienced slaughter plant. The meat is packaged and sold to the market, often very poorly presented, which destroys the credibility of Ostrich meat in their country before the commercial slaughter industry even gets started.
Making the transition from Breeder Market to Commercial Production is proving to be a challenge in every country that has started with Ostrich. A Strategic analysis was carried out in 1999 on the Global Ostrich Industry. Industry immaturity was highlighted as the fundamental reason for an industry that was slow to develop. This remains the fundamental cause. All to often, by the time a country has gained in experience, the majority of producers are out of business or at the end of their capital reserves. So birds are sold onto the next country starting a new Breeder Market again. The new country continues to make the same mistakes, instead of learning from the previous countries, and the whole cycle starts all over again. Somehow, we have to break this cycle of starting/failing or the global industry will fail.
2. Conference in China
A reminder of the Conference being held by the China Ostrich Farming and Development Association in Xi�an,China in Apr. 3-5, immediately after the "Asian Pacific Leather Fair" in Hong Kong. Full details of the conference can be found at their web site: http://www.woc2003.com
The largest farm in Asia has 5,000 breeder ostriches and forecasting to produce 30,000 commercial birds this year. Their abattoir will have a capacity of over 60,000 slaughtered ostriches to EU standard is almost completed.
3. Roche Nutrafacts and Feed Mixing Accuracy
A website address I regularly visit on the internet is http://www.dsmnutrafacts.com/home.jsp. They have some excellent articles and studies to view. As with many large companies, Roche has changed it's name. DSM Nutritional Products is the successor to Roche's Vitamins and Fine Chemicals Division.
I was reading through their articles on "Mixing Feed" last week to see if I could get some references to help me better explain the importance of accurately mixing feed. Those of you who have heard or read our references to Ostrich Low daily intake of feed will be able to relate to this quote from one of the articles entitled "Assessing Feed Uniformity Requirements":
Quote: "The differences in the research results, between the finishing pigs on the one hand and nursery pigs and day-old chicks on the other, suggest a promising area of study, Behnke says. He suggests there may be an interaction between age or metabolic body size and the requirements for nutrient uniformity, since a day-old chick would logically have a much greater need for nutrient uniformity than a finishing steer consuming 25 lbs of feed per day.Swingle (1996) concurs, and suggests that one possibility is to vary sampling size when measuring mixing CV. Whereas it might be critical for day-old chicks that every 10 to 50 g of feed be uniform in composition, he says, the benchmark might be 0.5
to 3 kg for finishing pigs and every 2 to 15 kg for finishing steers." End Quote
A few more very relevant quotes:
Quote: "Uniform feed is a vital, challenging goal for livestock and poultry operations. Whether an error is human, mechanical or a combination of both, faulty inclusion rates or poor mixing can produce a non-uniform diet with corresponding risks to animal health and performance." End Quote
Quote: "The coefficient of variation (CV) is the statistic most often used to describe the degree of ration uniformity, with a smaller CV being more desirable. The CV is calculated by dividing the arithmetic mean into the standard deviation. One advantage of using the CV when measuring feed uniformity is that it is expressed as a percentage, which simplifies comparison of markers that differ in magnitude of their inclusion and units of measurement." End Quote
Quote: "In a study using newborn broiler chicks, McCoy et al. (1994) reported significantly increased average daily gain as the mixing CV decreased from 40.5 percent to 12.1 percent. With this decrease in the mixing CV, there was also a numerical 6 percent improvement in feed efficiency as the feed:gain ratio declined from 1.82 to 1.72. No further improvements in animal performance were noted as the CV declined to 9.7 percent.
This study was run for four weeks and all birds were then shifted to a common finisher diet to monitor compensatory gain. The birds that had received the highly nonuniform diet earlier were not able to overcome the deficiency after three additional weeks on feed." End Quote
The last sentence is highlighted as it says a great deal. Everyone knows how precise poultry production has become and these differences in poor mixing caused the chickens not to be able to overcome their deficiency after 3 additional weeks on feed which is a most serious nutritional problem created. Given that the best poultry operations now finish their poultry in 32 days, the quoted period of 3 weeks (21 days) is a very long time and one can see just how much these types of mixing errors cost the poultry industry.
The article concludes - Quote: "In addition, tight control over feed uniformity will enable more accurate assessment of formulation and management decisions and should thus help maximize return on investment." End Quote
These same principles apply to Ostrich Production. The full article can be found at: http://www.nutrafacts.com/nutrafacts/articles/5_1_assessing.jsp.
4. Cutting the Costs of Production
A new Blue Mountain Nutritional Bulletin was published this week entitled "Cutting the Costs of Ostrich Production". A visit to the Roche Web site at http://www.dsmnutrafacts.com/home.jsp, while at the same time studying the contents of the bulletin, will help gain a greater understanding of how to cost production.
5. New Slaughter Plant in Alberta, Canada
Michael Sunderland reported, on the WOA Bulletin Board, an interesting initiative in Canada:
Quote: "At the last Board of Directors meeting on Jan.22, The Alberta Valuechain Coop. voted to proceed with a business plan to build a Federally Inspected, Producer owned, Slaughter and Fabrication Plant, likely to be sited N.W of Edmonton, with work to begin in Spring '04 and completion by Sept.'04. The plans include a bid by a German company to build a modular plant and train staff. All Diversified Species are included and Dr William BUCHTA, Manager of the Diversified Livestock Fund of Alberta was elected C.E.O on a short term contract. The most important aspects apart from giving Producers a better deal are the inclusion of Trace-back facilities and plans to build a Bio-Digester on the site which will produce Methane Gas. If all these proposals become reality then the Company in its cooperative status will become a leader in meat processing and source for local employment opportunities. It is a Provincial Govt. initative and will considerably improve the prospects for all producers here in Western Canada. I will update this exciting venture as plans unfold but for those in developing countries I hope this is of interest to you in particular. " End Quote
This is an initiative of the Provincial Government in Alberta to support all alternative livestock production. We wish Michael, his fellow Ostrich producers, and producers of other livestock that will be using the facility, every success.
If any members have some interesting news to report from your own regions, please either post to the WOA members mailing list or email me privately for inclusion into the Newsletter.
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Contributions
As always I ask for contributions from Country Liaisons and other members. A sharing of your experiences, what is happening in your area - anything you believe that would be of interest to other members. Any contributions for inclusion in future news letters please send to Fiona at [email protected].
Any comments or suggestions, please post either to the members list [email protected] or Craig at [email protected]