October 5, 2010
Schothorst Feed Research opens new R&D facilities
Press Release
Schothorst Feed Research has opened several new facilities- two facilities for nutrition research, a dairy facility, and a Veranda layer facility- on October 1 in the Netherlands.
The facilities were officially opened by Margreet Horselenberg, the mayor of Lelystad. This opening marks the completion of the first phase of an ambitious investment program in research facilities totalling EUR9 million (US$12.29 million). The facilities are meeting all requirements for accurate and applied feed evaluation studies.
Horselenberg stressed the importance of private international operating innovation centres for Lelystad at a time when governmental institutes are withdrawing from production oriented research. Executive Counselor of the province Flevoland, Andries Greiner, emphasized the necessity of innovation in the industry and agriculture. He called Schothorst Feed Research an important player in agricultural innovation and knowledge complex in Flevoland.
The chairman of Schothorst Feed Research said that with these new facilities the organisation will be able to meet the increasing international demand for animal nutrition research under conditions that will be common practice in the EU after the ban on cages.
The new layer facilities will house 26,000 layers in a Veranda aviary system. It consists of 80 experimental units with 330 layers each. It is a unique facility and is especially designed for requirement studies, studies to measure the interaction between nutrition and behaviour, ammonia emission and registration studies for the EU. The unit is also equipped with automatic feeding systems for each pen, and has automatic egg counting and weighing units for reliable production measurements. Outside EU the SFR recommendations will continue to be based on the regular laying hen cages.
The dairy facility will house 220 milking cows with 120 places for individual feeding units. This facility enables the researchers to perform nutrition experiments with fresh cows year around. In the next phase special metabolic units will be built for digestion experiments and rumen physiological experiments, next to the 10 rumen fistulated cows currently available.
These investments support the ambition of Schothorst Feed Research to expand their position as knowledge and research centre for the feed industry worldwide. Currently, there are feed companies in 14 countries that participate in the Advanced Feed Package programme that focuses on the development of the feedstuff evaluation programmes for dairy, pigs and poultry.