Non-conventional pelleting of livestock, poultry and aquatic feeds

Results revealed that molasses, cassava flour and Hikari substantially bounded feed materials during pelleting. The highest recovery of good pellets when dried for two hours in a laboratory drier was obtained using 20 percent molasses with 10 percent and 20 percent water at 97 percent. This was followed by the mixture of 10 percent molasses with 20 percent water at 92 percent, and 10 percent Molasses with 30 percent water at 91 percent. Among treatments with Hikari, 3 percent Hikari with 30 percent water yielded comparable binding ability as the former binders with 91 percent recovery when dried. Among the samples treated with Lignobond, the highest recovery was obtained when 3 percent of the binder were mixed with feed materials and 40 percent water. Preliminary data on the physical properties of commercially pelletized poultry and marine feeds have been documented to establishe the operational parameters for designing a high quality pellet mill. However, data gathered were limited to the diameter, length, and hardness of individual pellets for each formulation. Pelletized feed for poultry, Thunderbird and Frapana had about 10 mm length and 5 mm diameter while a brand for Tilapia had a 10 mm length and 4 mm in diameter. In terms of hardness, Thunderbird pellets for fighting cocks had greater hardness with a 5 kg-force compared to Frapana, which registered a 4 kg-force hardness. Tilapia feed, meanwhile, netted a 5 kg-force hardness. Hardness reflected the amount of force required to break the pellets. Among treatments, samples treated with molasses and Hikari were the strongest, requiring higher force to break. Hardness of the samples ranged from one to a 10 kg-force and 1 to 8 kg-force, respectively. Analysis revealed that type and formulation of binder significantly affected the power requirement, efficiency and capacity of the pelletizer as well as the physical properties of the pellets (e.g. bulk density and physical dimensions)