The Hindu Business Line : Spurt in soyameal price — Poultry feed makers migrating to alternative ingredients

MOST poultry feed manufacturers, especially in Tamil Nadu, are set to migrate to using alternative feed ingredients, as the spiralling soyameal price will pinch them hard making their cost of operation further unremunerative.

With both the broiler and layer sectors faced with one of the low demand syndromes for their products in recent times, the soaring price of soyameal, which normally forms the second key ingredient in the poultry feed after maize, will increase the cost of production further, the integrated poultry feed makers in the State feel.

"At the current all-time high rate of soyameal quoting at Rs 16-17 a kg, no integrated poultry producer would be able to use soyameal and still remain competitive considering the fact that both the live chicken and table egg produced by them being sold at far below the production cost," said Dr Selvaraj, Chairman of the Namakkal-based National Egg Coordination Committee (NECC) zonal committee.

Dr Selvaraj told Business Line that notwithstanding a grade lower efficiency in the animal foods for not having soyameal in the compounded feeds, most integrated feed makers in poultry were making effort to migrate to using de-oiled sunflower, rapeseed cake or mostly the groundnut cakes to make good protein supplement in the poultry feed.

He said as against the current market price of soyameal being quoted at Rs 16-17 a kg, the deoiled groundnut cake, rapeseed and sunflower meal were being quoted at Rs 5, Rs 7and Rs 9 a kg respectively and shifting to alternative feed materials to substitute soyameal has been engaging the minds of most integrated poultry producers to beat the cost of production.

In Tamil Nadu, the integrated poultry producers involved in both broiler farming and the layer productions consume roughly about 25000 tonnes of soyameal in the compounded poultry feed and the role of soyameal as a protein supplement is said to be around 25 per cent in the total feed mix. The feed-conversion ratio in poultry is one kg of chicken meat is equated to 2.5 kg of feed.

The continued low demand for live chicken and the eggs that hit badly the poultry farmers ever since the reported incidents of the `avian flu' in India's neighbourhood has forced many in the sector look for various means to cut the product cost.