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What came first: The chicken or the egg? It's been the question without a definitive answer since the beginning of time; but if you ask Aova Technologies, they'll tell you it all starts with the egg. Aova believes that the secret to providing poultry producers with higher nutritional performance, higher carcass yield and decreased mortality lies inside the egg.
This Madison, WI-based agricultural biotechnology company utilizes a patented technology to create a feed additive, sold in a dried yolk powder that can be rationed with most any producer's current feed.
Hyper-immunized laying hens produce an antibody that is deposited into the hen's eggs. They then spray dry the supercharged eggs into a feed additive that contains the concentrated antibody called aPLA2, or anti-phospolipase A2.
Aova named their breakthrough product BIG BIRD by no accident. Using their feed additive can bring poultry producers big benefits. BIG BIRD has been shown to improve egg production, egg shell quality, feed efficiency and most notably, improve gut health. Studies suggest that the conditions provided by the new feed stuff can increase production, promote growth and even decrease feed costs.
This breakthrough process didn't happen overnight. Nearly 20 years ago Dr. Mark Cook, Aova board member and the technology's inventor, began researching and developing at the University of Wisconsin the answer to what he saw as a serious problem.
The need for feed
Cook's inspiration to find a way to improve feed efficiencies came from the astonishing fact that it would take three planet earths to sustain America's standard of living for the world's 6 billion human inhabitants. Cook sought out to address the problem we would inevitably run into: the need for more feed.
Grains are a commodity being stretched beyond their capacity. Corn, wheat and rice meet a number of today's needs, including human consumption, animal feed and fuel. With the population expanding, there are more mouths to feed daily and the push for alternative fuels has also increased the demand put on the grain market.
Chickens can't feed on hay or straw like cattle can. They need corn and soybeans, commodities that compete with human consumption. Cook says that in an ideal world we could raise chickens without having to feed them anything that competes with human food consumption.
The next best thing would be to improve the feed conversion rate, or in other words, raise larger chickens while using less feed. Cook wanted to focus on achieving a higher carcass yield, to feed a larger number of people. He knew where he needed to start: improving the health of the chicken.
A level playing field
Traditionally, keeping chickens healthy was a game of waiting for bacteria to attack, then attempting to fight it. Cook criticized this practice because addressing the bacteria leaves too much to the unknown. Most bacteria live as short as 20 minutes, and 95 percent that inhabit the gut are relatively uncharacterized.
"People are trying to modify them, but when they have such a short lifecycle it's a tough battle to fight. We think it's a losing one," says Bryan Renk, president, CEO and director of Aova Technologies.
The number of different bacteria is nearly infinite. Cook says trying to target a specific bacterium is a reasonable feat, but attempting to fight all bacteria is a futile effort. He reasoned that fighting the known component would level out the playing field.
"The bird doesn't change from generation to generation but the bacteria will change. So if you target the gut wall, you have a lot less variation," says Cook.
The science behind BIG BIRD
In order to gain a higher yield, raising healthy birds is essential. A number of stressors can harm the bird, leading to disease and increased mortality. From transporting the chickens, to improper temperature controls, to excess humidity and an imbalanced diet, any one or combination of these stressors can prove detrimental to the fowl's health.
"A majority of the time an animal is going to see some sort of stressor. If that's the case they might as well take advantage of a good nutrition," Renk says.
Even an overload of good bacteria can be stressful to the bird's immune health.
"In every animal, 1.5 percent of its body weight is bacteria. The type of bacteria is always changing; sometimes these changes are beneficial and sometimes bad," says Renk.
How the chicken manages its defenses against the above stressors is what determines if it will become diseased or not. With regards to the stressor in the gastrointestinal tract, Aova has found by focusing on the gut wall, some of the stressors affecting feed efficiency can be modified and modulated.
That's where the aPLA2 comes in. The antibody in BIG BIRD's egg powder fights that damage that these stressors can have on the bird and passes through the system without affecting its bacterial population.
What producers can expect
"Most poultry producers want to achieve a 2-3-1 return on their investment and we feel that we hit that ratio," Renk says. Aova's trial data supports his claim.
Dr. Kevin Roberson, poultry nutritionist at Michael Foods, worked with Cook to conduct research on broiler chickens. They used 3,500 male broiler chicks, split into four groups. The first group was not fed any BIG BIRD while the second, third, and fourth groups were fed .01%, .02% and .04%, respectively. Group four experienced a higher carcass yield and higher parameter body weight.
At the end of the trial 41-day trial, the fourth group saw a 73% carcass yield while the first group experienced roughly a 70% carcass yield.
"When we fed a dried whole egg product at 4 to 8 pounds/ton, we saw carcass yield increase by about 3 percent," Roberson says.
Another significant finding was that birds in the fourth group weighed 2,765 grams while the chickens that weren't fed any BIG BIRD weighed only 2,732 grams.
If a supplement can improve the growth rate, the producer can reduce the set growing period, which in turn decreases labor and facility costs.
The average feed conversion, a tool that producers use to gauge the cost of their operations, improved about 5.8 points as well.
The next big things in poultry feed
BIG BIRD primarily serves as an alternative to antibiotics or probiotics, sometimes called direct-fed microbials. Some companies see the merit in studying and utilizing these probiotics. Unlike Aova, Michael Foods, a major producer of eggs, potatoes and other food ingredients, uses a probiotic to combat stressors in their chickens. They're specifically studying the probiotic's effects on chicks that arrive at the pullet farm and moved to the layer farm, which can cause stress to the bird. They are also investigating if there is a benefit to using probiotics for varying lengths of time after the birds are housed in the layer facility.
Michael Foods is also using chelated zinc to achieve some of the same results that can be obtained with BIG BIRD.
"We are using a zinc-proteinate product in Nebraska and experimenting with a zinc-methionine product in Minnesota to improve immunity and bird health." says Roberson. "We have also used a zinc-manganese-copper product in Nebraska for shell quality improvement," he adds.
It may be awhile before this technology becomes commonly used, however. Up until recently, research on the effect of zinc on young chickens has been aimed at the meat side of the poultry industry rather than pullets grown for the egg industry.
Using any of these products or BIG BIRD can produce healthy results. Finding the right feed additive to address your operation's specific needs is key to achieving higher efficiency.
author: By Elise Sommerfeldt