The hidden cost of grinding poultry feed too finely

Finer grinding may improve mixing and pellet quality, but it also increases processing cost and can remove useful structure from poultry feed.

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Feed Pellets In Hand
Dmitrii Ulianenko | BigStock.com

I once visited a feed mill where the hammer mill had become the unofficial solution to almost every production problem. When pellet quality declined, grain was ground finer. When segregation appeared, it was ground finer again. The resulting mash looked wonderfully uniform, and the pellets improved. But nobody had calculated the extra electricity, reduced milling capacity, or biological effect on the bird.

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