Digital Re-print January | February 2013

Use of computer programming in animal diet formulation

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FEATURE

Use of computer programming in animal diet formulation

by Dr Pratiksha Saxena, assistant professor, Department of Mathematics, Gautam Buddha University, India
bjective of animal diet formulation is to provide a palatable ration at minimum cost to meet nutritional and energy requirements of the animal. To achieve this objective, it is important to have knowledge about the requirements of specific nutrient ingredients and the nutrient composition of feeds, which are used to formulate the animal diet.

The first step in diet formulation is to define the objective of diet formulation. Depending on the objective of diet formulation (such as reproduction, lactation, livestock etc.), requirements for nutrient ingredients are established. This step includes individual units and overall requirement for Diet formulation is an important aspect diet ingredients. to meet production and financial goals in After defining the objective of study and the most economical way. A diet is called diet formulation, requirements of nutrient balanced if it provides energy to meet lacta- intake are defined to achieve that objective. tion, production and specific level of health While defining the requirement, social envirequirement. Economic as well as nutritional ronment, internal, external and economical aspects should be considered while optimis- conditions should be taken into consideraing nutrient ingredients. tion. These three factors are so intimately Nutrient requirements can be estabrelated to each other that cannot be sepa- lished by the empirical method and factorial method. The empirical method Figure 1: Nutrient levels, the limit of the nutrient ingredients and is based on price of the feed are three important factors for diet formulation. experimental studies Limit of the whereas Price of the nutrient Nutrient Level the factoration ingredients rial method identifies the

rated during the process of feed formulation.

Preliminary stages

various functions within the animal that defines the needs of nutrient ingredients. Nutritionists generally use both approaches; the factorial method is dominant due to the need to define requirements under diverse conditions but experiments are used to confirm the accuracy of results.

Ingredient selection and diet formulation

Once requirements for nutrient ingredients are established, the ingredients can be selected and nutrient contents calculated. After identifying the nutrient ingredients, diet is formulated by using existing methods and different mathematical techniques. There are different methods to formulate animal diet. Diet formulation includes balance mixture of ingredients which are economically sustainable and provides nutrient and energy requirements of a given species for a given response. Different kind of conventional methods to formulate the diets include: Trial-and-error method Two by two matrix method Square method Simultaneous equation method Least cost formulation Linear programming method
Grain

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FEATURE

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Figure 2: Define Objective Establish Requirements Select Ingredients Formulation of diet Evaluation of diet

8 10 April 2014 . Bangkok International Trade & Exhibition Centre (BITEC), Bangkok, Thailand

Asias foremost exhibition and Initially, feed manufacturers for animal the conferences for the ingredients objective of least cost rationing. To feed formulation used the trial and error achieve this, different kinds of mathematiand additives used in the hand cal programming have been used. For method but this included tedious production of animal feeds, example, linear programming, non-linear calculations programming, stochastic programming, aquafeeds and petfoods
Diet analysis and evaluation

E, Gelein R. 2005.), potentially affecting research outcomes.

Computer-aided feed formulation

A study was conducted for animal feed formulation based on internet remote and interaction by XiongBen-hai, LuoQing-yao and PangZhi-hong in 2002. This program is based on linear programming, with SQL Server 2000 database and ASP Web-page language Windows 2000 Advanced Server. The most important feature of this system is that it has set up one whole calculating platform to design all kinds formulas based on web technique, which can share information of feed science and animal nutrition to help directly designing feed-formulas. sis. Over recent years HACCP has become a A requirement of food and APOLLO centralcomputer program called feed safety was developed by A. Ahmadi, J. R. Dunbar legislation. and H. A. Johnson for formulation and analysis of ration for swine. It was based The logistics from food on the National Research Council Bulletin, production to the feed industry Nutrient food productionof site has differSwine, Ninth Each Requirements

o e e h d d le n e nn iirst h d g

sensitivity analysis, parametric cost and After formulation, the diet is evaluated to nutrient ranging, optimum-density formucheck the efficiency of diet. Chemical analysis lation, multi-blending, and risk analysis. Chance constrained programming is used is done to check whether the diet is mixed correctly or not. These five steps of diet to formulate commercial feeds for animals (Britt, J. S; Thomas, R. C; Speer, N. C; Hall, formulation are shown in Figure 2. By employing the correct formulation M. B., 2003). The linear programming model skills and techniques, animal performance can be solved for a complicated set of nutrican be improved. These are two important ent requirements to give a relatively wellFIAAP Asia 2014 is the only dedicated trade show and conference organised specifically for feed ingredients, additivesaspects, which the dynamica huge impactSouth and South East Asia. and formulation within make and growing region of on the balanced ration (VandeHaar and Black, M. overall profitability. Whether diet is formu- J., 1991). Alteration in the diet formulation New for 2014 Supported by can change undefined nutrient or dietary lated for Now including the first feed milers or integrators, maximiThe Thailand Convention ASEAN Feed Summit Bureau sation of animal production is and Exhibitionhuman components, such as fatty acids (Sabbatini important. Feed Materials Assurance Scheme (FEMAS) Products no longer intended for Specialist conferences Co-located with By supported widespread ME, 2006), phytoestrogensfeeds are NM, standard ensuring that all (Brown fully consumption, which may beVICTAM Asia 2014 The exhibition will be the end of the 1960s, destined for by its own specialist conferences. www.victam.com use of linearfeeding, must be kept separate Setchell DR. 2001), to supply giving both farm animal programming had been start- traceable from source (Thigpen JE 2009), They will include: Contact details The FIAAP Conference 2014 For visitor, exhibition stand ed fortransport,diet formulation. To take (Thigpen JE 2004)service and products. PJD. during animal storage and dispatch to and quality controlled phytosterols (Bouic The Petfood Forum Asia 2014 space and conference Aquafeed Horizons Asia 2014 the complexityinformationor food into account and please visit: scheme nitrosamines (Kaput J, Rodriguez from a supermarket returns depot nutrient 1999.), is based on Hazard Analysis Critical The Thai Feed Conference 2014 www.fiaap.com variability, different kinds of mathematical RL. 2004.), (Rao GN, Knapka JJ. 1987), and Control Point (HACCP) principles, an intermanufacturing plant. programming05/02/2013fully accredited towith methylmercury (Weiss B, Stern hazard analyOur services are into the picture the nationally recognised system of S, Cernichiari Untitled-1 3 came 17:15:31

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Revised Edition, 1988. This program runs on IBM PC compatible computers with 512K of memory. After feeding the input nutrient ingredients, this program formulates the ration using the linear programming primal dual algorithm. This algorithm is efficient in time and space because it does not require additional columns and rows for artificial variables. The output consists of five parts: cost and performance, ration composition, price ranges, nutrient analysis of the ration, and nutrient analysis of feeds in the ration which, in turn, consists of eight parts.

a mathematical model is formulated which should be nutritionally adequate at lowest cost. When formulating this mathematical model, availability of feedstuffs, physical palatability, toxicological properties of feed, logistics of obtaining feed ingredients and storage limit should be considered. After creating the mathematical model, computer programming is to be chosen for this purpose. A number of programming languages have been used for this purpose as C, C++, Java and MATLAB.

because of its easily applicable features. A programming technique is developed for animal diet formulation using non-linear programming and C language with the objective of maximum animal weight gain. The technique presented formulates and solve a non-linear program with optimum use of nutrient ingredients. It explores the use of mathematical and computerised programming in the field of animal nutrition and can be investigated in future for more variables (Saxena Pratiksha et al, 2012).

Practical and economic implications

In the 1980s, the first computer program was presented for animal diet formulation. Since then, a number of computer programs have been developed for the purpose of animal diet formulation which discusses specific feed formulation techniques in terms of their practical applications and economic implications. The use of computer programming lessened the time and effort required to provide affordable feed formulations for the feed industry. A wide variety of computer programs are available for ration formulation. Moreover, computer programming for animal diet formulation, is easy, convenient and saves time. A number of nutrient ingredients and constraints can be added to a diet in easier manner. It is also possible to check the impact of different nutrient ingredients on animal production without actually applying it with the help of a computer program.

Using C for feed formulation

One of the most basic and important programming languages is referred as C. Dennis Ritchie developed this programing language at Bell Laboratories in 1972. Many of its principles and ideas were based on the earlier language B and B's earlier ancestors, BCPL and CPL. The main features of this language are its flexibility that provides fast program execution and the lack of constraints it imposes on the programmer. It allows low level access to information and commands while still retaining the portability and syntax of a high level language. It is useful for both systems programming and general purpose programs. Due to this quality of C language, the Unix operating system, which was originally written in assembly language, was almost immediately re-written in C. C includes bitwise operators along with powerful pointer manipulation capabilities and modularity is another important feature of this language. Sections of code can be stored in libraries for re-use in future programs. This language is very useful for animal diet formulation

The advantages of MATLAB

MATLAB is another tool for matrix manipulations, and interfacing with programs written in other languages, including C and Java. It is a high-level language for numerical computation, visualization, and application development. Animal feed is formulated using MATLAB with the objective of maximum animal weight gain. In the first step, this technique involves formulation of objective function using non-linear programming. MATLAB is used as a tool for this purpose. In the second step, the solution of formulation is given and is compared to existing techniques. Use of non-linear programming overcomes the drawback of linear approximation of objective function (Saxena Pratiksha et al, 2012). In the present era of technology, it is convenient, time and money saving to take benefits of computer programming for this purpose. Using this technology, animal diet formulation can be simulated and experiments can be done with the help of computer programs, without hampering the existing system of feeding to the animal and could reach to better results.
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