Chickens flourish on 'Challenge' fare

November 07, 2007

Contestants in the "State of Origin" Chicken Challenge are helping to create the animal feeds of the future.

The contest to design the most nutritious and cost-effective chicken feed has taken this group of university students – in the words of one of their lecturers – "right to the forefront of developments in animal nutrition".

Tension was high at the University of New England last week when the 50-odd contestants – from UNE and the University of Queensland (UQ) – met to hear the judges' verdict.

Both universities, in fact, were successful. In announcing the results Rebecca Richardson, a journalist with The Armidale Express newspaper, said that, in a very tight contest, the judges had finally awarded the trophy for "the most efficient diet (in terms of dollar cost of feed per kilogram of chicken weight gain)" to UQ, and the cup for "the best diet (in terms of overall weight gain of chickens during the trial period)" to UNE.

This was the second annual Chicken Challenge contest between the two universities.

Dr Ian Godwin, who teaches the UNE students animal nutrition, said the Challenge "capitalised on students' enjoyment of competition in helping them to gain a better understanding of feed formulation concepts".

Dr Godwin explained that the UNE and UQ groups, using their knowledge of animal nutrition in conjunction with computer software, had each designed three formulas. These were an "unrestricted diet" (the best and cheapest diet drawing on all of a defined set of ingredients), an "organic diet" (that excluded ingredients such as meat meal, blood meal, bone meal, and soybean meal), and a "contemporary diet" (including both palm kernel meal – a lower-cost alternative to soybean meal – and "distillers' grains" – a by-product of ethanol production from cereal grains).

All six diets were tested on chickens at both universities in a "double blind" trial in which none of the contestants knew which of the diets – labeled simply "A", "B", "C", "D", "E" and "F" – was which. A commercially-available "control diet" was tested alongside the experimental diets, most of which performed better than the "control".

"The experiment has generated useful new information about feed ingredients that are likely to become more important in Australia in the near future," Dr Godwin said. "We are planning to present our results in a paper designed for publication in a scientific journal."

Dr Gordon Dryden – Dr Godwin's counterpart at the University of Queensland – said the Challenge had taken the students "to areas their formal course work has merely touched on". He said the close result indicated that the experiment had been meticulously conducted on both sides.

Both Dr Godwin and Dr Dryden emphasised the role of the Challenge in preparing the students to "hit the ground running" when they entered the primary industry workforce.

THE PHOTOGRAPH displayed here expands to show UNE Bachelor of Science student Sue Higgins weighing a chicken. It was taken during her involvement with the 2007 "State of Origin" Chicken Challenge.

Posted by Jim Scanlan at November 7, 2007 03:17 PM