How to rationally apply vitamin feed additives
Vitamins are catalysts for the body's biochemical reactions and metabolism in animals, and are an indispensable trace nutrient for maintaining normal physiological functions and normal growth and development in animals. If an animal lacks vitamins, it will have obvious adverse consequences for growth and development. Therefore, vitamins must be added to daily feed to meet the body's needs.
1. Determination of vitamin feed standards. Vitamin feeding standards are the requirements of animals for various vitamins. The NRC (National Research Council) standard is the most basic requirement of animals for vitamins and can prevent obvious vitamin deficiency. The optimal animal vitamin requirements formulated by some professional vitamin manufacturers such as Roche refer to the supplemental amounts that enable animals to achieve the best health status and production performance. Roche's optimal vitamin requirements are generally several times to several dozen times higher than the NRC standard. Therefore, when designing and applying vitamin additives, the vitamin feeding standard should be reasonably determined, generally higher than the NRC standard, and when conditions permit, Roche's optimal requirement standard can be used. It is necessary to consider the influence of many factors such as feed variety, animal health status, feeding environment, formula cost, and storage time, grasp them flexibly and scientifically, and meet the maximum needs of animal growth and development as much as possible. Especially for animals under stress, the vitamin level in the feed should be increased even more.
2. Appropriate excess application. Most vitamins are not highly stable and are prone to loss and reduced potency during feed processing and storage. In order to ensure that animals ingest sufficient vitamins, excess addition is generally recommended. 3. Selection of vitamin preparations. At present, vitamin preparations include single vitamins and multivitamin premixes. When applying them, you can decide according to actual conditions whether to premix multiple single vitamins yourself or purchase a multi-premix. Small production units mostly use multivitamin premixes. Because vitamin testing and quality judgment are relatively complex, products from professional manufacturers with good reputations should be selected.
4. Pay attention to the effective content, potency, and stability of vitamins. Most commercial vitamins on the market are not pure products or 100% potency vitamins. Therefore, when purchasing and applying vitamins, attention should be paid to their effective content and potency, and they should be reasonably converted. Different forms of the same type of vitamin also have different stabilities. For example, vitamin A palmitate is more stable than vitamin A alcohol, and vitamin E acetate is more stable than vitamin E alcohol. Therefore, in practical application, stable forms of vitamins should be selected as much as possible.
5. Pay attention to the independent addition of choline and vitamin C. Because choline and vitamin C easily absorb moisture and destroy other vitamins, they are generally not premixed together with other vitamins and are added independently at the time of use. Most commercially available multivitamin preparations also do not contain choline and vitamin C. If a multivitamin preparation is selected and used, attention should be paid to independently adding appropriate amounts of choline and vitamin C according to the feeding standard during application.
6. Adjust flexibly according to actual conditions. Vitamin feeding standards should not remain unchanged, but should be flexibly adjusted according to factors such as actual formula varieties, feeding environment, weather, and season, so as to ensure the animal's vitamin requirements under actual conditions and maintain better status and production performance. For example, for laying hen feed with high calcium and phosphorus, the levels of vitamin A and vitamin D should be appropriately increased to improve the absorption and utilization of calcium and phosphorus.
7. Necessary dilution and preservation. Because vitamins are used in small amounts and may react with each other and with other additives, damaging potency, it is best to dilute them by a relatively large multiple before application to reduce the concentration, and then premix them with other vitamins and additives. Especially when premixing with choline, trace elements, and acidic or alkaline additives, dilution work should be done even better to ensure good mixing uniformity and higher potency. The carrier commonly used for vitamin dilution and premixing is defatted corn starch. Vitamin products are relatively sensitive to external factors such as light and heat and are prone to losing effectiveness, so they should generally be stored in a low-temperature, sealed, and dry environment. After opening, they should be used as soon as possible, and the storage period should generally not exceed 1 month.
Liu Guoxin, Animal Husbandry Bureau of Yangcheng County, Shanxi Province