Recent App Released to Help Poultry Farmers Mix The right Ratio of Feed

By: Eddie Ayers, County Extension Agent

Spring is just around the corner and with the warmer weather the sound of baby chicks can be heard in the post office and the feed stores. Whether you are working with three laying hens in a backyard coop or a farm full of broilers, chickens need proper nutrition to live healthy, low-stress lives. Providing the correct balance of protein, vitamins and other nutrients can be challenging for those mixing their own feed. An incorrect mixture can lead to malnourished or stressed chickens.

Justin Fowler, an assistant professor in the Department of Poultry Science at the University of Georgia, recently released an app that will help midscale poultry producers mix the right ratio of feed ingredients needed to maintain a healthy flock. FeedMix, funded by a grant from the World Poultry Foundation, was released for both Apple and Android platforms at the end of 2016.

Fowler, who joined the poultry science department in 2015, developed the app after working with the emerging poultry industry in Ghana. He was one of a delegation of UGA poultry scientists who traveled to Ghana in June 2015 and June 2016 to help the Ghana Association of Poultry Farmers set up a Cooperative Extension-style continuing education program for Ghanaian poultry farmers.

Ghanaian poultry farmers who mix their own feed do so from ingredients that are very similar to U.S. producers’ ingredients, mainly corn and soybean meal. About 57 percent of Ghana’s chicken farmers grow at least some of their own feed components on their farms. After those visits to Ghana, Fowler collaborated with fellow faculty members and scientists. Together they created a simple app to help producers know exactly what they are feeding their birds when they are on-site, mixing their own feeds.

Gene Pesti, professor of poultry science and animal nutrition at UGA, compiled this information into a series of Excel workbooks, but many small farmers don’t always have access to the desktop or laptop computers needed to use them. They do, however, have smartphones. The advantage of this technology is that it provides immediate feedback to producers who are on a small enough scale that they may not have a good handle on exactly what kind of nutrition they are providing their flocks.

FeedMix is the second app released by the UGA poultry science department. In 2015, Brian Fairchild, Mike Czarick and agricultural engineer John Worley developed CHKMINVENT, an app that allows farmers to enter local climatic conditions and other factors to calculate cooling and ventilation plans for their chicken houses. Farmers in the U.S. and across the globe have downloaded the app more than 1,000 times.

For more information about the poultry science program at UGA, visit http://www.caes.uga.edu/departments/poultry.html and to learn more about these poultry science apps, search for them in Apple’s app store or on Google Play, or contact me in the Gilmer County UGA Extension office.

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