Quality and traceability of a home-made feed: retained samples, manufacturing register, licence

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.

A farmer calls: "your bags from last month made my chickens ill". An inspector turns up: "show me what batch 17 contained and who you sold it to". Your own flock in house 2 drops off: "what did it eat last week, exactly?". In all three cases, an expert workshop answers in under two hours, documents and sachets in hand; an ordinary workshop answers "I think that...". The difference is called traceability, and it rests on few things: a batch number, five registers, retained samples properly stored, a complete label, and a recall exercise done regularly. This lesson puts them in place one by one, for own use as for sale, and says what the Ivorian licence expects to see.

• ✓Give a batch number to every manufacture and keep the five registers that link raw materials, manufacturing, checks, dispatches and incidents
• ✓Organise the retained samples of raw materials and finished feeds: sampling, labelling, duration, storage
• ✓Write the complete label of a bag of feed for sale and know what a bag for own use must carry
• ✓Run a two-hour recall exercise (upstream and downstream) and prepare the workshop for the licence and the internal audit

1. Quality, traceability: two words, a single requirement
2. The batch number and the five registers
3. Retained samples: take, label, keep
4. The bag label: own use and sale
5. The recall exercise: two hours, upstream and downstream
6. Critical points, internal audit and the licence
7. Going further

• •Quality = proven consistency; traceability = finding for any bag where it came from and where it went, in under two hours; the link is the batch number (YYMMDD-formula-no., e.g. 261105-G2-03), which changes as soon as a raw material lot changes.
• •Five registers: receipt (workshop lot assigned), manufacturing (kilos weighed + lot of each ingredient + dated formula version + mixing + operator + balance), checks, dispatches (house or customer with contact), non-conformities (finding, cause, action, verification, closure).
• •Retained samples: 500 g from three bags; raw materials until end of use + 1 month; farm feed 2 months; feed sold until the use-by date + 1 month; medicated 6 months; numbered boxes, list on the wall, expired ones out every month (170 sachets for the medium workshop).
• •Sales label: name and type, species and stage, decreasing composition, analytical constituents, additives, directions, manufacturing and use-by dates (2 months), batch, manufacturer with licence, net weight; own use: feed, batch, date on every bag.
• •Quarterly recall drill (upstream: formula, raw materials, receipt, retained samples; downstream: dispatches and sister batches; action; closure in register 5: 100 minutes in the example); critical points with limits; monthly internal audit; the Ivorian licence looks at this system, which NEXTEKCI runs in Agnibilékrou.