Analyses: what to have analysed, how to read a report, what to do with an out-of-range result

This lesson is part of Making feed on the farm, expert level specialisation. It opens to every registered student, from free registration. Levels 1 to 5 and the tracks remain readable by everyone.

All formulation rests on figures: 46% protein in soya, 14% moisture in maize, 38% calcium in shells. As long as these figures come from a table, the formula is a hypothesis. The day they come from an analysis report of your own lot, it becomes a certainty, and that is the day the workshop becomes expert. This lesson says what to have analysed and how often, how to take a sample that truly represents 20 tonnes, how to read a report line by line (dry matter, as fed, tolerances), and which decision to take, in order, when a figure falls outside the range. With two real reports solved: a soybean meal and a layer feed.

• ✓Draw up the workshop's analysis plan: which analysis for which raw material and which feed, how often
• ✓Take a representative sample of a lot (probe, sampling points, quartering, label, twin retained sample)
• ✓Read an analysis report: convert dry matter and as fed, compare with tables and tolerances, interpret urease and soya solubility
• ✓Apply the decision tree to an out-of-range result and recalculate the formula with the true value

1. Why analyse, and what each analysis measures
2. Taking a sample that represents the lot
3. Reading a report: worked example, a soybean meal
4. Tolerances: from when a result is "out of range"
5. The decision tree for an out-of-range result
6. The workshop's analysis plan over a year
7. Going further

• •You analyse to formulate right, buy right and defend yourself: moisture, protein, fat, fibre, ash, calcium, phosphorus, sodium, aflatoxins, urease and KOH of soya; energy is calculated, amino acids are deduced.
• •Sample: probe, 10 to 20 spread bags, quartering down to 1 kg, 500 g to the laboratory and 500 g twin, complete label; 10 kg for mycotoxins; 80% of errors come from sampling.
• •Conversion: as fed = dry matter × (100 − moisture) ÷ 100; soya at 47.8% on dry matter and 11.5% moisture = 42.3% as fed; urease 0.05 to 0.30 (above: undercooked, refused); KOH 73 to 85 (below 70: overcooked).
• •Finished feed tolerances: protein ± 1 point, calcium ± 0.3 (± 0.4 lay), sodium ± 0.05, moisture + 1 at most; contaminants: threshold without tolerance.
• •Decision tree: label → tolerance → twin → true value in the sheet and recalculation (soya 42.3%: + 2.9 kg of soya, + 0.6 kg of oil) → lot isolated and labelled → register and supplier; finished feed: trace back the chain.