How can I prepare a pellet high fat diet for rodents that keeps a firm consistency?
It is quite common for broiler diets to spray fat on the pellets after pelleting. This should be possible for rodents as well, provided that the feed mill is equipped for doing that.
You may choose a lipid with a fatty acid mixture rich in SFAs and that will keep it more solid than one with PUFAs.
C.A. Kess Kan, we prepare the diets manually.
Marshall , the problem is that my diet need to be rich in n-3 PUFA series, specifically fish oil.
thanks for the answers...
You can try a binder chemical like powdered soy protein or corn starch. If you want something non-nutritive you might use cellulose powder to hold onto the lipid/oil
1) You might try to apply the oil also manually on the pellets. The problem then is, that dosing is not accurate and different doses hard to accomplish.
2) Efficient (non-nutritive) binders might be so efficient in binding the oil, that the fatty acids will not be (totally) available to the animal. I experienced that in one of my early experiments.
So if you are planning a nutrition experiment where fat absorption is essential, try to work around the use of binders in some way, unless you are sure that all fatty acids will be available to the animals as intended.
Thank you so much! This is a very important consideration Kan, I wasn´t pondering about this point . Maybe the most easily solution is to reduce the fat content...but I will try the cellulose powder too... I forgot to say that this diet is the AIN-93M... tnx
Hey Isy,
I am having a similar problem with my powdered diets. Can you tell me which solution has worked best for you? Thanks
Hi Siddharth! I´ve solved this issue by reducing total fat to 39,21% of energy, provided by lipids. This diet will crumble a little bit, but it´s still possible to properly control the ingestion. I hope that this information is useful for you! My email is [email protected].
Thanks!
Am about to start my project on the same and wondering do mice eat powdered food ? Or just pellets.
How do you quantify the percentage of fat in your diet?
If you want to determine feed intake, then pellets are to be preferred. Also then the animals can not select individual feed ingredients.
You can calculate fat content from ingredient composition or determine it chemically.
Thanks Kan, am also looking for a collaborator. Any assistance given will be highly appreciated.
Being retired for quite some time, I have to rely on my memory and experience and not on any new developments. Anyway, feel free to ask your questions.
Hi Kan, can you explain please how can you make high-fat diet step by step please? :)
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