Animal feed production and analysis from egg and almond hull agricultural waste

Abstract

Food and agricultural waste contribute to resource depletion, waste accumulation and climate change. Chicken egg and almond hull waste streams have favourable nutritional profiles but are underexplored for environmentally friendly livestock feed applications. We report extrusion processing and nutritional analysis of blends containing liquid egg and almond hulls. Compositions showed favourable processing, protein content comparable to grain silages and relatively low neutral detergent fibre. No differences in crude protein or fat were observed between Hard-variety and Nonpareil almond hull compositions. Hard-variety compositions contained nearly twice the crude fibre as Nonpareil mixtures. Crude protein increased from 9.3 to 13.8% with 30–50% egg content. Bacterial proliferation in extrudates was minimal due to the low water activity (aw = 0.80–0.82 in 30% egg formulations). No Salmonella or mycotoxins (aflatoxin, vomitoxin, zearalenone) were detected. This work provides a method for repurposing high moisture, high protein food waste into animal feed using abundant, low-cost almond crop residues and demonstrates the feasibility of creating an animal feed from liquid egg waste and almond hulls.

Keywords

• Food waste
• extrusion
• almond hulls
• animal feed
• egg waste