Tastes Like Chicken

The ethanol industry is no longer concerned about swimming in its coproduct (distillers' grains) because nearly every new ton is finding a market. A growing market is the poultry industry, which is beginning to feed more of the coproduct as a way to offset production costs.

Mississippi State University (MSU) poultry scientist Alex Corzo and his colleagues are evaluating the differences between poultry on conventional diets and poultry on feed containing distillers' grains. They have studied live production and carcass traits, as well as color, texture and flavor of broiler meat. Initial taste testing shows there are no significant differences in broilers on the two different diets, Corzo says.

"Both treatments produce high-quality breast and thigh meat with minimal differences," Corzo says. "There was a slight preference from consumers for broilers fed traditional diets, but both products were well-liked overall and received high scores from participants."

Corzo and his colleagues fed layer hens one of five treatment diets containing increasing amounts of dried distillers' grains with solubles (DDGS), and then eval-uated factors such as egg production and quality.

There were no negative impacts on production of commercial layers with levels of up to 32% of DDGS in the diet, Corzo says. In addition, the layers showed superior egg production with up to 16% DDGS incor-porated into the feeding regimen.

"We also observed some benefits in regard to flavor and product acceptability with eggs from hens with DDGS in their diets," he adds.

Ethanol Industry Shifts Sideways

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