How the Contents of Your Fat Tank Affect Fat Quality

What You’ll Learn:

• Oxidation can reduce the energy value of fats in your ration, which can have a dramatic impact on animal health and performance.
• Various factors can affect fat quality from time in storage, to heat, to the mixing of different lipids.
• There are several best practices to help protect the fat in your fat tank.
• Research done by Kemin’s Customer Laboratory Services (CLS) team indicated fat quality can be immediately impacted when added to an untreated fat tank.
• Antioxidants are great tools to protect your fat and, ultimately, help maintain animal performance and feed quality.

WHAT’S IN YOUR FAT TANK?

The contents of your fat tank could be reducing the quality of your fat.

The quality of the fat you feed can have a dramatic impact on animal health and performance. While high-quality fat is key to an animal’s health and performance, oxidized fats can create a host of problems. Oxidized fats reduce gut integrity, decrease feed palatability, create toxic metabolites, destroy fat-soluble vitamins and decrease performance. Minimizing oxidation and maintaining high-quality fat is crucial to successful animal production.

To prevent oxidation, it’s important to know what causes it. Time in storage, application of heat, the mixing of different lipid sources, and the cleanliness or condition of your tank all affect fat quality and influence oxidation.

Read more: Learn how summer heat speeds up oxidation.

FAT TANK CONDITION AFFECTS FAT QUALITY

The condition of your fat tank and its effects on oxidation and fat quality are easy to overlook. All fats contain small amounts of sediment, which accumulate as “sludge” at the bottom of the fat tank. Over time, this sludge builds up and coats the inside of the tank. When new fat is added to the tank, the free radicals in this residue disperse and immediately trigger oxidation of the new fat. This process can reduce the value of even the highest-quality fat during storage in your fat tank.

HOW TO PROTECT THE QUALITY OF THE FAT IN YOUR FAT TANK

Follow these best practices to help ensure fat maintains its nutritional value while it’s being stored in your fat tank.

• Purchase high-quality fat, preferably from only one or two verified suppliers.
  • Do not mix different sources of fat in the same tank.
• Continuously monitor the quality of your fat. To see if your fat tank is negatively impacting the quality of fat, it’s important to test fat quality from the delivery truck and then from the fat tank.
  • Read more: Discover four reasons to test your feed, fat and water.
• Stabilize your fat tank by adding an antioxidant system — such as RENDOX^® — to your fat source. Antioxidants are used for oxidation control in fats and oils and can help protect lipid quality.
• Clean your fat tank every six months to remove sludge and residues that contain free radicals.

Read more: Learn about fat protection best practices.

THE RESEARCH ON UNCLEAN FAT TANKS AND THE USE OF ANTIOXIDANTS

Kemin Customer Laboratory Services (CLS) completed a field study to determine the impact of an unclean fat tank on high-quality, non-antioxidant-treated fat and how the implementation of a RENDOX antioxidant system could impact the quality of fat leaving the tank. The fat tank was sampled three times per week for three sampling periods (prior to antioxidant implementation, two weeks post-implementation and four weeks post-implementation). Samples were analyzed using three recognized quality tests for oxidative stability. 

The results showed that once high-quality fat was added to the untreated fat tank, blending of the fats allowed for the poor-quality, free-radical-loaded fat in the tank to immediately impact oxidation. The first sampling period confirms low oxidation stability index (OSI) times and elevated secondary oxidatives. After the implementation of the RENDOX antioxidant treatment, OSI begins to increase — indicating improved stabilization of the fat. In addition, secondary oxidative levels begin to decrease, signifying interruption of the oxidative process.

LOOK TO THE EXPERTS FOR ANTIOXIDANT SOLUTIONS FOR YOUR FAT TANK

Ultimately, to help maintain animal performance and feed quality, both monitoring and protecting fat quality is key. Antioxidants quench free radicals to prevent oxidation and help stabilize and clean your fat tank over time. But remember, fats are highly variable, so choosing the right antioxidant for your fat source is just as key to your success. With more than 20 years of experience, Kemin has developed antioxidant solutions that will help your business succeed. For more information on how Kemin antioxidant solutions can help you maintain the nutritional value of your fats and oils, visit Kemin Animal Nutrition & Health – North America.

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