Barriers to the Implementation of Max-Profit and Stochastic Feed Formulation Strategies: A Survey of the Australian Poultry Industry

A survey of industry groups including nutritionists, producers, feed manufacturers, and technical personnel in broiler and layer operations within the Australian poultry industry was completed to determine the industry’s present views of max-profit and stochastic feed formulation and the barriers they see to implementing these techniques. A total of 32 responses were collected, made up of 17 nutritionists, 4 feed manufacturers, 5 producers, and 6 technical personnel. The survey revealed interest and need to implement stochastic and max-profit feed formulation techniques and identified the key barriers to the implementation of these feed formulation techniques. Barriers identified included limited software to assist nutritionists in using these feed formulation techniques, less data collection than in other animal industries, insufficient training, and possible restrictions on nutritionists via KPIs to minimise diet cost. It was identified that layer farms did not routinely use near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) to estimate the nutrient content of feed ingredients and so mostly relied on book values and historical data. Thus, stochastic feed formulation may be particularly useful to buffer the uncertainty and ensure the minimum nutrient requirements of flocks are met. Recommendations were drawn to improve the adoption of max-profit and stochastic feed formulations of Australian layer diets.