Oat benefit to Christmas turkeys

NEW OAT varieties could benefit both oat growers and Christmas turkeys, according to a new project.

The Sustainable Arable LINK project, Oatlink, aims to identify and select the important traits in oat varieties for high performance poultry feeds of the future.

“The advent of naked oat varieties has opened up the poultry feed market to oats and recent work has shown that turkeys perform well on a diet including naked oats,” said Cark Munsell of Oat Services, a partner in the project.

By developing improved rations the project will benefit oat growers and poultry producers, said Roger Williams, R&D manager for the Home Grown Cereals Authority.