NEWS FEED & ADDITIVE MAGAZINE December 2025 23 In poultry houses where broiler chickens — birds bred and raised specifically for meat production — are grown, feed is delivered through long feed lines, which are mechanized systems that automatically deliver feed from storage silos to feeding pans. They run from the front of the houses to the back, and sometimes nutrients become unevenly distributed. This can lead to inconsistent feed quality, which can affect bird growth and health. To help the poultry industry determine the extent of this problem, researchers at the Pennsylvania State University, US, conducted a study of how nutrient distribution affects broiler chicken performance, processing yields and bone mineralization. “Walking through commercial poultry houses, and looking in the feed pans, seeing what the birds are consuming, we saw a difference in the quality of feed from the front of the house where feed was coming in to the back end of the house,” said John Boney, Vernon E. Norris Faculty Fellow of Poultry Nutrition in the College of Agricultural Sciences, senior author on the paper. “That led us to the question: If we can see a difference in physical quality of the feed — meaning many of the pellets have broken down into fine particles or dust — how does that variability affect nutrition the birds get?” In findings available online that will publish in the December 2025 issue of Journal of Applied Poultry Research, the researchers reported that variability in two key nutrients along the feed line affect broiler chickens’ growth performance, including body weight, feed-conversion ratio, processing yields — like breast meat yield — and bone strength/mineralization. The two key nutrient areas are amino acid density — the amount of essential amino acids, which are the building blocks for proteins, in the feed — and Phytase Activity, which is a type of protein called an enzyme responsible for initiating and accelerating necessary biological reactions - that helps chickens absorb phosphorus from plant material. Read more>> New study links nutrient consistency to broiler health Photo: Freepik A global producer of specialty feed additives, Orffa announced its renewed purpose, vision and mission, distilled into a new brand promise: “Orffa. The science in your feed.” With this announcement, Orffa states that it reaffirms its commitment to placing validated science at the core of its solutions, supporting customers and partners with expertise and data that deliver measurable value across animal farming. The global feed industry is undergoing rapid transformation, with rising demand for transparent, evidence-based and reliable insights. Orffa’s renewed direction aims to respond to these needs by strengthening its scientific foundation and providing customers with clearer guidelines for formulation efficiency, performance predictability and sustainability. The new brand promise is highlighted as reflecting Orffa’s broader ambition to enable better-informed decision-making across the industry, grounded in peer-reviewed science and independently verified results. Over the past year, Orffa has taken significant steps to further embed scientific excellence into its operations, including: • Advancing gut health analytics through its partnership with Florates, enabling more precise microbiome-driven decision-making, • Initiating scientific collaboration on methane abatement with SeaForest to explore new pathways for sustainability. Read more>> Orffa introduces new science-driven brand promise Photo: Orffa
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