Mobile NIR and LC-MS/MS Technology in the Egg Production Industry

Ali Eskin Poultry Business Development and Project Manager

Dr. Artun Reman Temiz Poultry Technical Product Manager

DVM. Özcan Erdoğan Export and Technical Director

In the egg production industry, considering that feed costs constitute about 80% of total costs in animal production, the importance of precision feeding for sustainable and competitive production, and for maintaining the existence of facilities under today’s difficult conditions, is steadily increasing. Precision feeding can be defined as the most efficient use of available feed raw materials, which are becoming increasingly valuable and harder to obtain, in order to precisely meet the nutritional requirements of animals. However, considering the variability in both price and composition of raw materials, the first and most important step is to determine the nutrient content of raw materials more accurately and precisely. Since you cannot control what you cannot measure, analysing feed raw materials upon receipt at the facility has now become essential.

In egg production facilities, feed is generally produced in home-mixer feed units located within the facility itself. These feed units usually send samples of the incoming raw materials to external laboratories for analysis, since they often do not have an in-house laboratory.

Even when a laboratory exists within the facility, analysis results are obtained at the earliest after 16 hours, whereas for samples sent to external laboratories, this period becomes much longer due to transport time. Meanwhile, the raw materials arriving at the feed unit may be processed and served to animals as feed on the same day. For facilities to have a laboratory, they must make a significant investment, employ trained and qualified personnel, and ensure a steady supply of consumables for analyses. From the perspective of speed and cost, wet chemistry cannot provide the required turnaround time for egg production facilities, and its cost is significantly higher. The best solution to meet this need is a Mobile NIR. Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (NIR) can help support precision feeding by analysing the nutritional values of raw materials more quickly and at lower cost. Mobile NIR solutions, which require a much lower investment cost for egg production facilities, stand out as a more flexible and affordable alternative to desktop NIR, which requires a high initial investment

The benefits of using Mobile NIR in poultry nutrition include:

1.  Rapid sample analysis by NIR allows nutritionists to understand variation in raw materials better, enabling them to adjust formulations, safety margins, and monitor feed unit efficiency by correlating formulated rations with actual nutrient values. Based on these analysis values, feeds produced can be verified by NIR, ensuring production quality control and improving traceability through recorded analysis results. Excesses and deficiencies in rations are minimised, allowing animals to consume feed precisely at the level of their needs.

2. NIR helps facilities better monitor variations in raw materials, track materials supplied by vendors, and conduct supplier evaluations, thereby strengthening quality assurance and enabling more effective purchasing decisions based on analytical data. Moreover, by allowing raw materials to be categorised internally, it can generate profit and minimise variability within the feed mixture, providing an additional advantage.

3. Another benefit of NIR is that it allows the development of an extensive raw material database that supports more informed and accurate decision-making. Its rapid and low-cost nature enables measurement of large numbers of samples. With the resulting comprehensive database, various analyses and reports concerning the facility can be generated.

4. Software compatible with NIR technology can assist nutritionists in using feed raw materials more quickly and effectively in rations.

During the production, processing, transport, and storage of raw materials, numerous factors may adversely affect the nutritional value of products and threaten feed hygiene. Particularly, raw materials with damaged grain integrity can easily become mouldy when exposed to moisture and heat for extended periods.

With the release of mycotoxins, the nutrient composition of feeds begins to deteriorate; protein, amino acid, and vitamin levels decrease, and feed palatability is reduced. Therefore, mycotoxins negatively affect feed quality, nutritional value, animal health, and performance. In poultry, mycotoxins cause hepatotoxic, carcinogenic, teratogenic, and immunosuppressive effects; in acute poisonings, they may lead to sudden deaths, while in chronic exposures, they cause significant performance losses. In laying hens, mycotoxins may lead to delayed onset of laying, sudden drops in egg production, reduced egg weight, shell-less eggs, paler yolk colour, blood spots, and prolapses. In breeders, they can cause embryonic losses, reduced hatchability and chick quality. The detection of mycotoxins such as Aflatoxin B1, Deoxynivalenol, and T-2 toxin in eggs highlights the importance of this issue for both animal and human health.

For sustainable livestock production, maintaining feed hygiene and ensuring food safety, raw materials and feeds that pose a mycotoxin risk must be analysed, and contamination levels should be quantified numerically. Although several analytical methods exist for determining mycotoxin presence and concentration, LC-MS/MS (Liquid Chromatography–Tandem Mass Spectrometry) offers exceptional sensitivity and specificity, enabling the clear differentiation of even structurally similar molecules through its dual mass spectrometry (tandem) technique combined with liquid chromatography.

For sustainable livestock production, maintaining feed hygiene and ensuring food safety, raw materials and feeds that pose a mycotoxin risk must be analysed, and contamination levels should be quantified numerically. Although several analytical methods exist for determining mycotoxin presence and concentration, LC-MS/MS (Liquid Chromatography–Tandem Mass Spectrometry) offers exceptional sensitivity and specificity, enabling the clear differentiation of even structurally similar molecules through its dual mass spectrometry (tandem) technique combined with liquid chromatography.

With its broad range of applications, LC-MS/MS enables practical, rapid, and simultaneous multi-analyte testing. Beyond determining mycotoxin risks and concentrations in raw materials and feeds, it is equally important to evaluate the efficacy of toxin binders, which remain among the most widely used and safest approaches for managing mycotoxins in animal nutrition. LC-MS/MS facilitates detailed assessment of a binder’s activity spectrum, adsorption capacity, mycotoxin binding stability (desorption), and potential interactions with nutrients.