Feedstuffs in Focus

AI for early poultry disease detection

In a poultry barn, disease does not wait for the next walk-through. We sit down with Dr. Guoming Li of the University of Georgia to talk about a practical question every grower and integrator faces: how do you catch health problems early enough to protect animal welfare, reduce losses, and safeguard food safety when time and labor are limited?We explore precision poultry farming tools that turn everyday signals into early warnings. Dr. Li breaks down how thermography and machine learning can detect temperature shifts linked to avian influenza and Newcastle disease, and why focusing on non-feathered regions like the head and legs improves accuracy by reducing ambient-temperature noise. We also discuss how image-based diagnostics can fit into real farm routines, including the idea of a smartphone app that uses deep learning and transfer learning to classify fecal images for Salmonella risk assessment without adding expensive sensors.Then we tackle the hard part: trust. When a model trained on one dataset fails on another region or housing system, it exposes the generalizability problem that still holds back AI disease detection. We also look at behavioral analytics, including the broiler activity index and computer vision tracking of movement patterns, as biomarkers for illness, stress, and abnormal conditions. Finally, we zoom out to what makes AI reliable in animal health: curated datasets, rigorous validation, and science-based inference instead of confident guesses.If you care about poultry health monitoring, biosecurity, and practical AI on farms, listen now, share this with a colleague, and leave a review so more people can find the show. What signal do you think will become the most trusted early-warning tool: heat, images, or behavior?

Is your message clear and understood or just loud?

A lot of farm problems look like “people problems” until you zoom in and see what’s really happening: unclear expectations, mismatched communication styles, and feedback that never gets said out loud. We sit down with Dr. Brent Sexton of Suidae Health and Production to talk about communication on farm and why it stays challenging even when we’re always on our phones, computers, and email. From quick instructions in the barn to high-stakes decisions in livestock production, the message you send is only half the story. The other half is how it lands.We dig into self-awareness as a practical leadership tool and why understanding your own tendencies can change everything about how you manage, coach, and collaborate. Personality assessments like DISC and Myers-Briggs are not magic, but they can highlight default patterns such as urgency, intensity, or a need for more data before acting. When you know your style, you can adapt your approach to the person you’re talking to, build rapport faster, and reduce friction inside farm teams and animal agriculture operations.We also get real about feedback and how to make it usable. Critical feedback is rarely comfortable, but avoiding it is costly. We talk about formal reviews, in-the-moment coaching, and the underrated habit of asking for feedback before small issues become big ones. From there we tackle two major pressure points: language barriers and cultural differences, plus digital communication where tone is hard to read and a short “K” can spiral into assumptions.If you care about clearer farm communication, stronger teamwork, and better day-to-day execution across animal health and nutrition, hit subscribe, share this with a manager or crew leader, and leave a review telling us the communication challenge you want to solve next.

Early-life respiratory disease shapes dairy-beef crossbred cattle performance

BRD doesn’t always announce itself with a dramatic crash in gain. Sometimes it shows up months later where nobody expects it: on the rail, as lower marbling and a worse carcass grade. That’s the unsettling thread we pull on with Dr. Melissa Cantor of Pennsylvania State University, as we unpack what early-life respiratory disease means for beef on dairy, beef, and crossbred calves. We start where lifetime health really begins: colostrum management. Dr. Cantor explains how immunoglobulin G (IgG) transfer shapes passive immunity, antibiotic treatment risk, and even survival. From there we dig into why bovine respiratory disease peaks around weaning, what lung consolidation can look like for weeks after milk is removed, and why “they caught up later” can still hide real damage. Facilities and daily routines become the practical battleground. We talk ventilation targets (including why shutting barns tight in winter backfires), nose-to-nose contact in wire pens, sanitation and bedding removal, and calf housing choices that reduce stress while supporting early grain intake and rumen development. We also get specific about detecting BRD the right way, why coughing alone is a poor trigger for antibiotics, and how free tools like the UC Davis respiratory scoring system can tighten decision-making. Finally, we cover pathogen shedding during stress.If you raise or buy beef on dairy calves, share this conversation with a partner, subscribe, and leave a review so more producers can find practical, science-backed calf health strategies.

Inside the feed supply chain: How nutrient shortages are impacting U.S. protein sector

The proper nutrients can make a big difference but what happens when they aren't available or are priced out of the diet formulation?  We sit down with IFEEDER’s Lara Moody and Dr. Yuan-Tia Hung to unpack new species-level reports that reveal how disruptions in feed-grade vitamins and amino acids ripple through broilers, layers, turkeys, and swine operations. The conversation connects precise on-farm impacts—like average daily gain cut in half when lysine runs short and broiler meat yield slipping by double digits—to the bigger picture of U.S. food security and supply chain resilience.We dig into what the data say: where lysine, methionine, threonine, and tryptophan matter most by species and phase; how vitamin A, B-complex, D, and E shape animal health and carcass yield; and why reformulating with corn, soybean meal, DDGS, or fish meal is only a partial fix. You’ll hear how higher crude protein can strain gut health and barns, why costs can spike more than 50% when replacing methionine in poultry diets, and where ingredient-based vitamin replacement simply hits a wall. Then we zoom out to trade realities: imports of vitamins rising from roughly 68% to 76%, a widening price discount from China encouraging least-cost rations, and vitamin A capacity utilization hovering around 40–50%, all pointing to fragility in a system that looks cheap—until it is not.We talk through practical resilience moves for producers and nutrition teams, from mapping critical nutrients and testing reformulation scenarios to diversifying suppliers and considering targeted inventories. On the policy side, we explore why tariffs likely miss the mark for vitamins, and how credible data equips stakeholders to pursue smarter levers that encourage diversified capacity and faster approvals for alternative sources. Want the details? The full 200-plus-page report, a 12-page summary, and species sub-reports are available at ifeeder.org.If this conversation helps you plan better, subscribe, share with your team, and leave a review. Your feedback guides future deep dives and keeps these industry-critical insights flowing.

Akralos to deliver advanced feed and nutrition solutions

Akralos Animal Nutrition, a new North American animal feed and nutrition company, officially launched Feb. 1. Formed through a joint venture between global agriculture leaders ADM and Alltech, Akralos combines Alltech’s U.S.-based Hubbard Feeds and Canada-based Masterfeeds businesses with ADM’s U.S. feed operations.Operating an extensive network of more than 40 feed mills across North America and supported by more than 1,400 team members, Akralos delivers reliable, high-quality feeds, minerals and supplements through its trusted brands, backed by advanced nutrition expertise, leading-edge science and personalized service.We talk with Alltech President and CEO Dr. Mark Lyons to learn more about the longstanding relationship between the two companies, the unified organization's mission and what's ahead.