High-Shear Dry Extrusion: Another Tool for the Miraculous Broiler Industry
It’s not hyperbole to call the chicken meat industry, commonly referred to as the broiler industry, miraculous. I’m not explicitly referring to anything that producers of chicken meat do as supernatural however, but consider the following true statements related to the broiler industry and see for yourself how miraculous this industry can be:
- By number, domesticated chickens and poultry account for 4-12% of all birds on the planet, but taking mass into account, they make up about 70% of all birds.
- Chicken meat has become ubiquitous worldwide. The price consumers pay has risen much less, perhaps half as much, compared to other types of meat.
- It was once common to need 16 weeks to get a chicken to market weight. Now, it takes about 6 weeks. Modern broilers are huge and are eating machines – all from selective breeding. It’s easier than ever to find and afford chicken meat.
An industry with this level of productivity needs a myriad of tools for support. The biggest ongoing cost for the broiler industry is the feed. Broken down more specifically, the costs of energy and protein, the two major components of a diet formulation, are high. The quality of these nutrients greatly directly affects growth and the efficiency of feed conversion.
The ExPress® process, created by Insta-Pro®, is a quality-minded approach to ingredient processing. With this high temperature, short time cook method, the amino acids in protein are preserved and improved, while the amount of energy usable for growth increases. In short, an improved version of commodity ingredients, like soybean meal, is produced with high-shear dry extrusion, followed by mechanical oil pressing, and allows broilers to respond with a better efficiency and reduced time to market by up to 4 days.
Improved ingredients like those from the high-shear dry extrusion process are very helpful when trying to support a massive, productive industry like the broiler industry. The modern broiler is somewhat like an elite human athlete – consuming vast amounts of nutrients and putting them to use. Even a minor ingredient problem can quickly derail producer goals.
