AMANDA

The project could make it possible to propose several levers:

• Improving the competitiveness of the industry: in broiler production, feed is the main expense item. However, with the rising cost of raw materials, customized feed could reduce the total quantity of nutrients distributed to the animals, thus significantly reducing feed costs.
• Protecting the environment by reducing nitrogen and phosphorus discharges, and taking into account the environmental impact of raw materials: adjusting nutritional intakes to strictly meet animal needs, and using highly digestible PRPMs, will enable proteins to be better valorized, thus reducing nitrogen and phosphorus excretions (pollutants) and limiting losses to the environment.
• Improving protein and nitrogen self-sufficiency: European poultry farming, and French poultry farming in particular, is dependent on soya supplies, most of which come from Brazil. However, by adjusting the protein content of feed on a daily basis to strictly meet the animals' needs, we can avoid situations where the protein intake (and therefore the use of soya) is too high in relation to the animals' actual requirements.

The overall aim of the project is to propose an innovative feeding strategy for broiler chickens to improve nutrient utilization efficiency. This "tailor-made" feeding strategy is based on the use of mathematical models to adjust ration composition on a daily basis. The operational objectives are :

• Develop a model for predicting nutritional requirements that can be adapted to production objectives for two types of broiler production (standard and label);
• Build robust models to predict the performance (growth and feed intake) of a batch of broilers, based on the previous days' performance, in order to adapt rations as closely as possible to the animals' needs;
• Provide a tool for multi-objective formulation of customized feeding strategies, adapted to logistical and operational constraints in the field;
• Provide a technical, economic and environmental assessment of the customized feeding strategies developed on the experimental station.

• Development of prediction models and feed formulation tools adapted to customized feeding.
• Distribution of a decision support tool for day-to-day adjustment of the ration to be distributed according to the performance of the current batch.