Larvae meal: what are its effects on the diet of chickens and what is its energy value?

We bring you an article written by the University of Turin, a partner in our project, regarding insect meal and its effects on the diet of chickens.

In recent years, one of the goals of researchers is to find ways to reduce the environmental impact of raising animals for human consumption. The possibility of replacing traditional protein sources with high environmental impact (such as soybean meal) with insect meal in poultry diets could contribute to this goal, making farms more environmentally sustainable. Among the most promising insect species is the black soldier fly, which is an excellent source of protein and essential nutrients for farmed chickens.

The article is an excerpt from the Italian Journal of Animal Sciences publication titled “Meta-analysis of the effect of black soldier fly larvae meal in diet on broiler performance and prediction of its metabolisable energy value“ and available here

The aims is to determine by meta-analysis the responses of broiler performance to increasing dietary levels of black soldier fly larvae meal (BSFLM) and to develop prediction models of the apparent metabolisable energy corrected to zero nitrogen balance (AMEn) of BSFLM.

Eighteen studies from 12 countries that sum up to 20 experiments and involved a total of 63 treatments with 468 replicates and 4229 birds fulfilled the requirements for the meta-analysis. Four papers from three countries that investigated eight different samples of BSFLM were selected for development of AMEn prediction by means of regression analysis or artificial neural network (ANN) modelling.