Laboratory services

Analytical analysis

Feed First offers a wide range of analytical services of animal feed samples, feed raw materials, silages, fresh forages, medications, and other specialised analyses.

ADDITIONAL SERVICES

The Feed Fist laboratory is unique in offering our clients tailor-made and quality packages, including providing customers with all the specific instrumentation and consumable requirements for their own feed mill laboratories.

NIR ANALYSIS AND VALIDATION

Feed First offers NIR analysis of raw materials, complete feeds, silages, and forages.

As one of our focus areas, Feed First offers analytical services to customers with the purpose of providing fast, consistent, and accurate laboratory analyses.

We pride ourselves in offering quality in-house results, as well as sourcing the best specialist local and international laboratories for our clients’ unique needs. We strive to achieve swift turnaround times and highly accurate results.

We are continuously developing and improving our NIR calibrations for clients with a specific need for a particular nutrient or product. We keep a reference sample database, which we use to offer NIR validation services to clients who wish to validate the calibration of their own NIR instrumentation. Validations match NIR results with wet chemistry results to ensure accuracy and precision of the results. There are three possible outcomes for a validation namely: the calibration works well, the calibration works well but a bias or slope adjustment is required, or the calibration does not acutely predict the analysis.

  • Professional internal laboratory
  • Collaborating and cooperation with the best global laboratories for specialist nutrient analysis
  • Specially negotiated prices for customers
  • Competitive cost, quality, and accuracy, including:
  • Development of optimal analytical schedules
  • Interpretation and best use of nutrient results
  • Monitoring of the quality of wet chemistry results for accurate NIR calibrations

Additional services

The Feed First nutritional experts add further value to its analytical component by providing a service that assists clients with solutions to use their analytical results in the most effective way. Interpretation of results is offered on request to our clients. Our laboratory is unique in offering our clients tailor-made and quality packages.

We receive samples of complete feeds, feed raw materials, premixes and macro-packs, forage, silage, water, microbial swabs, and much more. Additionally, Feed First also provides customers with all the specific instrumentation and consumable requirements for their own feed mill laboratories. 

Tailored packages

  • Amino acids (including cysteine and tryptophan)
  • Proximate analysis packages with minerals
  • Fat quality
  • Feed lime quality
  • Fishmeal quality
  • Heavy metals
  • Monocalcium phosphate (MCP), mono-dicalcium phosphate (MDCP), and dicalcium phosphate (DCP) quality
  • Medication, including antibiotic growth promoters and coccidiostats
  • Microbial analyses, including:
    • Total viable counts (TVC) of Salmonella spp. and Eschericia coli (emuneration and confirmation)
    • Yeast and mould
    • Salmonella monitoring through environmental swabs
    • Isolation and identification of Aspergillus spp.
  • Microscopy: Identification and quantification of ingredients in mixed feeds
  • Microscopy: Quality evaluation of feed and raw materials (purity, degree of processing, etc.)
  • Phytase
  • Ruminant forages and silage
  • Soya quality, including trypsin inhibitors
  • Vitamins
  • Water

Laboratory and feed mill equipment

  • Pellet durability instruments
  • Complete urease baths
  • Sample probes
  • Sample dividers
  • Hectolitre mass instruments
  • Sieves
  • Maize grading sieves
  • Label printers and consumables
  • Phenol red
  • Deionised water
  • Microbiology consumables
  • Laboratory reagents and consumables