Qualitative Determination of Undesirable Constituents and Common Adulterants of Feed

QUALITATIVE DETERMINATION OF UNDESIRABLE CONSTITUENTS AND COMMON ADULERANTS OF FEED

  • Quality of raw ingredients decides the quality of the compounded feed. The following physical characteristics of the feed ingredients should be considered for determination of feed quality.
    • Soundness of cereal grains /seeds: There should not be any broken / damaged seeds/grain or any foreign material.
    • Dampness: The ingredients should not be damp. The dampness can be detected by pressing the ingredients in the hand.
    • Colour: The ingredients should possess their characteristic colour.
    • Odour: The ingredients should emit their characteristic odour.
    • Texture: The ingredients should have their characteristic texture.
    • Infestation: The ingredients should be free from insect, mite and mould infestation.
    • Presence of adulterants.
  • The chemical characteristics should also be considered to determine the soundness of the ingredients. The raw ingredients may contain some undesirable constituents or adulterants. This will have an influence on the nutritive value of the feed or may cause harm to the animal. The adulterants present in the feed can be widely grouped as
    • Accidentally present adulterants
    • Intentionally added adulterants

Accidental adulterants

  • Most of the feed ingredients for livestock are agricultural or allied products / by-products. During the course of their processing many unwanted materials such as husk, cobs, hulls, stones, mud, pebbles, sand and weed seeds can get accidentally incorporated. These are called as accidental adulterants.
  • The presence of these adulterants may increase the crude fibre / silica contents of the ingredient and thereby reduce the digestibility and nutritive value of the ingredient. Some weed seeds may also contain deleterious principles, which may cause harm to the animals.

Intentional adulterants

  • As a fraudulent practice in order to make more profit the wholesale dealers/ retailers may intentionally add husk, cobs, hulls, stones, mud, pebbles, sand, weed seeds and also some chemical substances like urea to increase the weight or nutritive value by default.
  • The presence of these may cause harm to the animals or alter the nutritive value.

How to detect adulterants?

  • Whenever raw ingredients are purchased a representative sample should be drawn out using the standard procedure. The sample is further screened for the presence of adulterants as follows.
    • A handful of the sample is taken and spread over a white paper on a table.
    • It is examined under sufficient natural or artificial light.
    • The ingredient is methodically counted and pushed to one side looking for the presence of adulterants, which are also counted.
    • Based on the count the proportionate presence of adulterants can be arrived at.
  • To detect chemical adulterants sample has to be sent to laboratory.
Last modified: Saturday, 27 August 2011, 11:13 AM