Meat and bone meal is used as a vitamin and mineral supplement for feeding cattle and small cattle, as well as pigs and poultry. This is a very valuable product that contains a lot of protein. The use of meat and bone meal allows you to balance the diet of animals and significantly increase their productivity.
Product Description
It is a meat or bone meal powder of light or dark brown color with a specific smell. When choosing this product, you should pay special attention to the shade. The color should be exactly brown. A yellowish hue indicates that the product is of poor quality. Chicken feather gives this color to the powder. In birds, when yellow flour is added to the feed, a decrease in egg production is observed. In addition, the consumption of feathers provokes the development of cannibalism in chickens.
By quality, meat and bone meal is divided into three classes, depending on the fat content. The smaller it is, the better the product. When evaluating the quality of flour, you should also pay attention to:
- Smell. It should not be musty or putrid.
- Appearance. Only flour of a uniform composition is considered to be of high quality. It should not contain lumps or granules with a diameter of more than 12 mm.
How is it made
In the production of this product, meat is used that is unsuitable as food for humans: carcasses of animals fallen from non-communicable diseases, waste from the meat processing industry, etc. The manufacturing process consists of the following steps:
- Waste meat production is boiled and cooled to a temperature of 25 degrees.
- The resulting squash is crushed in special aggregates.
- The powder is sieved through a sieve.
- The resulting flour is driven through magnetic separators to remove metallic impurities.
- The product is then treated with antioxidants to prevent fat spoilage.
- Ready powder is packaged in bags or bags.
Meat and bone meal: instructions for use when feeding chickens
The inclusion of this product in the diet of laying hens can significantly increase egg production and save a little on feed. Mix the meat and bone meal of the chickens in both concentrated feed and in the mash. The optimal dose is 7% of the total number of grains.
Only high-quality meat and bone meal should be fed to the bird. For chickens, this product is very useful because it contains a large amount of protein. Unfortunately, in recent years, many companies involved in the manufacture of flour, to reduce its cost, began to add soy to it. Feeding with such a fake does not bring practically any result. Egg production does not increase; in birds, due to lack of protein, the number of cases of biting and cannibalism increases. Therefore, you should not buy cheap flour from little-known manufacturers.
You cannot give too much flour to the bird. This can cause an unpleasant disease such as gout. Also, chickens, in the diet of which the content of this supplement is exceeded, often develop amyloidosis. This is the name for the violation of protein metabolism, accompanied by the deposition in the tissues of substances with a certain chemical property.
Meat and bone meal: instructions for use in feeding pigs
In addition, feeding meat and bone meal stimulates animals to gain weight. It is given to pigs in an amount of 5-15% of the total mass of feed. It can be a very good supplement for both sows and animal rearing. It is not recommended to use meat and bone meal as an additive only for very small weaned piglets.
After adding flour to the feed, it is no longer possible to heat it. Otherwise, most of the protein and vitamins will be lost. This rule should be observed when feeding both pigs and other types of farm animals and poultry.
Usage for cattle
Feeding this product to cattle also significantly improves productivity. For cows, flour made from poultry or pork should be selected. In a product containing bones and muscle tissue of cattle, there may be a causative agent of such an unpleasant cow disease as spongiform encephalopathy.
Since cows are still herbivorous animals, they often simply refuse to eat meat and bone meal. In this case, the product is mixed with bran or concentrates with a gradual increase in dose. For several days, the amount of cattle flour consumed should be brought to 10-100 g per head. MPC give no more than 20 g per day.
Flour in the diet of other animals
In small quantities, this product, which is a source of protein, vitamins, and minerals, can be given to other types of farm animals and birds: ducks, geese, rabbits, guinea fowl, turkeys, etc. In this case, the proportion of flour from the total amount of feed is usually no more than 5-10%.
The use of such a product as meat and bone meal for dogs (not more than 100 g per day) will be fully justified. This allows you to save a little on feeding animals. This product in this case acts as a substitute for meat.
Previously, owners of four-legged friends used flour to feed quite often. Recently, however, many modern, balanced protein, vitamin and mineral supplements designed specifically for these animals have appeared on sale. Therefore, meat and bone meal for dogs is currently used quite rarely. Pet lovers see it more as a budget option for complementary foods.
Quality Product Composition
This meat and bone meal, the use of which is justified when breeding almost all types of farm animals, has a balanced composition regulated by certain veterinary standards. The protein in it should contain at least 30-50%. The composition of flour includes such substances:
- Muscle and bone tissue. This is the main ingredient of the product.
- Fat. It should not contain too much (no more than 13-20%, depending on the variety).
- Ash in an amount of 26-38%.
- Water. It should also not be too much (no more than 7%).
In addition, the composition of flour may include such waste from the meat processing industry as stomachs, thyroid and parathyroid glands, ovaries, spinal cord and brain, lungs, liver, kidneys, spleen, etc. The quality and composition of meat and bone meal GOST 17536-82 are regulated. . Compliance information should be provided on the packaging.
Other substances
A small percentage of the content in the flour of metal-magnetic impurities (particles up to 2 mm in size) is allowed. They should be no more than 150-200 g per ton of product. Among other things, meat and bone meal, the use of which allows you to save on feed, contains substances that stimulate the metabolism in animals. First of all, these are adenosine triphosphoric and glutomic acids. With a lack of the latter, for example, chickens may develop growth depression.
Stimulate the development of poultry or animals and some other substances contained in flour. These include, for example, carnitine, bile acids, seratonin, thyroxine, etc.
How to store
Meat and bone meal, the instruction for the use of which was given above is a product containing a large amount of protein and fat. Therefore, it must be stored correctly. Otherwise, at best it will be useless, at worst it will negatively affect the health of animals or birds. A very important condition for maintaining the beneficial properties of flour is compliance with the rules for its storage. Bags with this product should be kept in a dry, ventilated area. Water or sunlight is not allowed on them.
The air temperature in the hozblok or in the warehouse should not exceed + 30 degrees. Overheating of the product must not be allowed in any case, otherwise the fat contained in it will begin to decompose with the release of a toxic substance - acroline aldehyde.
Of course, it is impossible to feed an expired product to animals and birds. The permissible storage time of meat and bone meal is indicated on the packaging. Usually it is no more than one year.
As you can see, meat and bone meal is a really useful product and is truly irreplaceable in animal husbandry. Its inclusion in the diet allows you to increase the productivity of cows, sheep, pigs, chickens, etc., as well as stimulate weight gain and growth. But you can achieve good results, of course, only when choosing a quality product and its proper use.