The worst use of an external nutrition consultant is to employ another person to formulate the same feeds. This creates duplicated authority, defensive behavior and endless arguments over small specification differences. The company does not need two people driving the same car — especially when one is not there every day.
An in-house nutritionist runs the nutrition program. This includes maintaining formulas, updating ingredient prices and analyses, communicating with procurement, supporting feed manufacturing, evaluating suppliers, responding to farm problems, and ensuring that feeds comply with company and regulatory requirements. These decisions occur daily, sometimes hourly. They require detailed knowledge of the company’s birds, farms, mills, people and operating limitations.
