Organic minerals for broilers and laying hens: reviewing the status of research so far

The current NRC recommendations for broiler chickens and laying hens are cause for concern within the animal feed industry, as they are based on very old trial data. This means the work was not only conducted with old-fashioned breeds of commercial chickens, but also relied on inorganic oxides and sulphates in feed and archaic diet formulation, with different quality and types of raw materials compared to those fed now. For modern poultry producers, these recommendations are so obsolete that they may be considered redundant for practical purposes. Broiler chickens and laying hens have benefitted from improvements in genetics and feeding practices since the 1950ʹs and 60ʹs, when many of the trials were run. They now also have the viable option of using chemically organic forms of minerals, which are known to be better absorbed, utilised and stored in tissues compared to inorganic ores. Since 2003, a program of research has been conducted comparing commercial organic minerals (Bioplexes®, Alltech Inc, USA) with inorganic forms, which monitored performance and excretion of minerals, as well as evaluating the new (lower) levels of organic minerals required for sustaining poultry performance. This large scale project began with a series of seminars, including one day on poultry, where global experts in this area discussed the problems and issues relating to mineral nutrition. A collection of the papers from these seminars were compiled and published (Taylor-Pickard and Tucker, 2005), and gave rise to a global project to redefine mineral nutrition. The following paper reviews the work completed to date, where chemically organic forms of minerals have been used in poultry diets.