The high cost of fuel, with the resulting ethanol boom, continues to push corn and other animal feed prices higher. In 1990, the amount of U.S. grown corn used to produce ethanol was approximately 300 million bushels. By contrast, this year, some 2.3 billion bushels of corn will go to ethanol. In 2008, the figure is projected to climb to 3.8 billion, and by 2011, projections call for well over five billion bushels of corn to be made into ethanol.

Government incentives, and higher fuel costs have caused U.S. grown corn to be diverted from animal feed to ethanol production, causing a rise in corn prices from $2.00/bushel in 2005, to a high of $3.50/bushel in 2007. This has caused a rise in other feed grain costs, as those grains are substituted for corn.

Feed costs account for approximately half of the expense related to poultry production. As feed costs increase, the cost of production continues to rise.

The addition of AGRASTIM® to poultry feed has been shown to improve feed conversion, allowing the producer to bring the bird to market weight in less time, and with a lower feed cost.  In trials done with broilers, feed costs to bring the bird to market weight were reduced by an average of 2 cents per bird. This means that a producer that processes, perhaps, 181,000,000 pounds of chicken per week could realize an average net feed conversion savings of as much as $866,000 per week, or $45,000,000 per year.

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