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Effect on Nutrition

Let's talk a bit about the effect of feed processing on the nutrition of the animal. It is one of the main reasons that we process grains. Processing reduces particle size, this exposes the nutrients contained in feeds for more action by microorganisms in preparing nutrients for the animal and also exposes these nutrients to the tissues of digestion lower in the digestive tract. Processing will generally increase passage rate or the rate at which feed passes through the animal's digestive tract. It can increase feed conversion to production and maintenance requirements and as we have talked about before, heat treatment will reduce anti-growth factors in certain feeds, can gelatinize starch making it more digestible and, on the other hand, can reduce vitamins and increase oxidation of feeds later in storage. Feed processing may reduce or may increase feed density depending the process we are talking about.

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