About Us

CopRice is a division of Ricegrowers Limited; one of Australia’s largest farmer owned organisations. CopRice has been supplying high quality animal feeds for over 30 years through plants in Leeton, Tongala and Cobden.

The motivation for the development of the CopRice stockfeed mills was in response to the availability of rice by-products such as rice pollard, a high quality feed which is high in energy and protein. Rice however is only one of the many ingredients CopRice uses in producing your stockfeed daily. Traditional feed ingredients such as wheat and barley are also used as well as vegetable proteins such as canola and lupins. All these ingredients are carefully blended to produce top quality stockfeed for your livestock.

CopRice has the technology and the experience to accurately formulate, mix and pelletise your ration in a form that can be easily digested by livestock providing optimum performance.

All of our pellets include macro minerals, vitamins and trace elements. This allows you to achieve improved performance through improved animal health & nutrition.

Why use CopRice pellets?

The grain seed coat has limited digestibility (55% for pigs, 65% for ruminants) and imposes the first barrier for digestion of grain for animals and improvements in digestion are usually recorded when grain has been ground.

Most grain processing methods increase the rate of starch fermentation and starch digestibility in the rumen. Processing of grains reduces particle size, which yields enormous benefits in starch digestion. However, fine grinding may reduce intake and increase losses of dry matter in handling because of the increased amount of fine dust-like particles.

In addition, a finely ground product is less palatable, may irritate eyes and lungs and will predispose ruminants to rumen hyperkeratinosis.

In all grains, the endosperm consists of cells which are packed with starch grains. These grains are surrounded by a protein matrix which normally occupies all that space not taken up by starch granules. Disruption of the protein matrix encapsulating starch granules in the endosperm seems to be a major factor affecting ruminal starch degradation (McNeil et al., 1975.

Possibly the most important effect of heat treatment of grain is to cause the starch to gelatinise. Gelatinisation is defined as the irreversible destruction of the crystalline order in a starch granule so that the surface of every molecule is made accessible to solvents or reactants.

Gelatinisation in feed is brought about by a combination of moisture, heat, mechanical energy and pressure differential and/or pH modification. (Feed Manufacturing Technology IV p 131)

Basically, the gelatinisation of starch has two results important to digestion:

• Gelatinisation enhances the ability of starches to absorb large quantities of water, and this leads to improved digestibility in almost all cases and to improved feed conversion in many cases.
• Gelatinisation increases the speed at which enzymes (amylases) can break down the linkages of starch to convert it into simpler and more soluble carbohydrates, including blood sugars (glucose). (Feed Manufacturing Technology IV p 131).
  
  

There are a number of potential advantages in feeding pellets over grain:

• Balanced proportions of proteins, minerals, vitamins and buffers can be incorporated into the pellets. The higher the level of concentrate feeding, the greater the likelihood that nutrient balancing will be necessary.
• Risks of excessive unpalatable and toxic substances associated with supplements, such as urea, are avoided by careful lending of ingredients.
• Pellets are usually less dusty than mechanically processed grains (Feeding Concentrates pg 62).
  
  

Davidson and Ehrlich (1991) compared a cracked grain meal with a pellet diet of the same basic ingredients. Results showed an improved difference of 1.3 kg milk/ day in the pellet diet. The improved production was attributed to better utilisation of starch in the pelleted rations. The evidence for this was much lower faecal starch levels in pellet-fed cattle.

Improvements in digestibility are presumably due to the exposure of more endosperm to enzymic attack.

Ruminants generally respond well to heat treated grain. Increased digestibilities are associated with reductions in feed intake, as the animal eats to a constant net energy intake.