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Animal feed is an important input to animal agriculture, and is frequently the main cost of the raising or keeping of animals. Farms typically try to reduce cost for this food, by growing their own, grazing animals, or supplementing expensive feeds with substitutes, such as food waste like spent grain from beer brewing .
Feed manufacturing refers to the process of producing animal feed from raw agricultural products. Fodder produced by manufacturing is formulated to meet specific animal nutrition requirements for different species of animals at different life stages. According to the American Feed Industry Association (AFIA), [1] there are four basic steps:
The use of agricultural land to grow feed rather than human food can be controversial (see food vs. feed); some types of feed, such as corn , can also serve as human food; those that cannot, such as grassland grass, may be grown on land that can be used for crops consumed by humans. In many cases the production of grass for cattle fodder is a ...
Animal husbandry drives climate change, ocean acidification, and biodiversity loss, and kills 60 billion animals annually. [80] It uses between 20 and 33% of the world's fresh water, [81] Livestock, and the production of feed for them, occupy about a third of the Earth's ice-free land. [82]
The quantity of feed, and the nutritional requirements of the feed, depend on the weight and age of the poultry, their rate of growth, their rate of egg production, the weather (cold or wet weather causes higher energy expenditure), and the amount of nutrition the poultry obtain from foraging. This results in a wide variety of feed formulations.
In Canada, intensive animal production, like other agricultural sectors, is also subject to various other federal and provincial requirements. In the United States, farmed animals are excluded by half of all state animal cruelty laws including the federal Animal Welfare Act. The 28-hour law, enacted in 1873 and amended in 1994 states that when ...
As an example, more than half of Canadian production (22.8 million pigs) in 2008 was exported, going to 143 countries. [12] Among animals raised for their meat, pigs have a lower feed conversion ratio than cattle, which can provide an advantage in lower unit price of meat because the cost of animal feed per kilogram or pound of resultant meat ...
Innovative emergency fodder production concepts have been reported, such as bush-based animal fodder production in Namibia. During extended dry spells, farmers have turned to use woody biomass fiber from encroacher bush as a primary source of cattle feed, adding locally available supplements for nutrients as well as to improve palatability.