Raw material and nutrient lexicon

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Main nutrients

The healthy and safe nutrition of the animals requires on the one hand that the nutrient composition ofthe feed is known and on the other hand that knowledge and information about the nutrient requirements of the animals are available. The evaluation of the feedstuffs is carried out in the same units of measurement that are also used for labelling the requirements. Therefore, feed evaluation is closely linked to the determination of requirements. In animal nutrition, the known main nutrient groups protein, fat and carbohydrates are subdivided according to subject and assigned their own technical designations. The basis of feed evaluation is, among other things, the so-called Weender feed analysis. In this process, various nutrient groups are determined according to defined analysis procedures. These are crude protein, crude fat, crude ash, crude fibre and the so-called "N- (nitrogen) free extract substances (NfE)". The four first-mentioned nutrients are also used for labelling a feed, the "NfE" are specified by further analyses. The main nutrients in this fraction are starch and sugar. But the crude protein of a feed is also broken down further for a professional feed evaluation. For this purpose, the building blocks of the protein, the amino acids, are determined in further analyses. Especially the so-called essential amino acids are the focus of interest. The most important essential amino acids are lysine, methionine, threonine and tryptophan. They are also called the four first-limit amino acids. The technical designations for the individual nutrients have also been adopted by the legislator in feed legislation and are used for comprehensive labelling of feed.