Crude Fat Testing in Feeds

Crude fat is a general term for fat-soluble substances in feed. In addition to real fat, crude fat also contains other organic substances that are soluble in ether. It includes chlorophyll, carotene, organic acids, resins, fat-soluble vitamins, and other substances. Crude fat is an important part of the feed. It plays a very important role in the nutrition of animals and plants and in improving the palatability of feed.

To grow and renew tissues, livestock and poultry must take in fat or other raw materials forming body fat from feed to meet their needs. Therefore, crude fat is an important indicator for judging the quality and authenticity of feed products. Lifeasible can provide customers with a variety of methods for testing crude fat content in the feed. For feeds with different physicochemical properties, we can provide targeted processing to ensure the accuracy of the test results.

Direct Soxhlet extraction and Hydrochloric acid hydrolysis

• For samples with a high-fat content (at least 200g/kg), we will pre-extract them with petroleum ether.
• For special samples, we heat hydrolyze with hydrochloric acid, cool the hydrolyzed solution, filter, wash the residue and dry it, and then extract with petroleum ether. Finally, the solvent is removed by distillation and drying, and the residue is weighed.
• For other samples, we extracted them with petroleum ether, removed the solvent by distillation and drying, and weighed the residue.

We used direct Soxhlet extraction to measure the free fat content and acid hydrolysis to measure the total amount of free and bound fat.

Fourier transform near-infrared spectroscopy

• Firstly, the instrument is warmed up, then we set the appropriate scanning spectral range, resolution, and number of scans to scan and store the samples. We repeat the procedure 3 times for each sample to eliminate objective differences.
• The method utilizes the vibrational absorption of organic matter in the near-infrared spectral region to rapidly determine the content of various chemical components in the sample. The octave and ensemble bands of the various hydrogen-containing groups contained in the fat fall exactly in the NIR region. This method allows us to obtain information on the characteristic vibrations of the hydrogen-containing groups of organic molecules and to determine the content of crude fat in feedstuffs.

Scope of application

• Pure animal feed, including dairy products.
• Pure plant feeds where fat cannot be extracted without pre-hydrolysis, such as gluten, yeast, soybean, and potato proteins, and heat-treated feeds.
• Compound feeds contain a certain amount of processed products with a fat content of at least 20% from these processed products.
• Feeds of types other than oilseeds and oilseed residues.

With the rapid growth of the livestock and feed industries, fats and oils as the most expensive nutrients in feed formulations have forced feed producers to think about obtaining some lipids from other ingredients in feeds due to market pressure. Lifeasible's crude fat test results can be used as a basis for feed formulation design and can accurately reflect the fat content of feeds. It is a very important guideline for the overall rational application of fat in feed and the reduction of feed costs. Please contact our staff for a sample dispatch form.