Digestibility Laboratory

The digestibility laboratory provides scientific and technical support to research on the relationship between productive efficiency and the feeding of animals for slaughter. It focuses on the nutritional assessment of diets by means of composition analysis of essential nutrients, energy assessment and physical-chemical determinations.

This laboratory has the capacity to perform nutritional and energetic assessment determinations in raw materials destined for animal feed, for this purpose it has the following equipment:

Analysis and extraction area:

• Quantitative analysis of nutritional parameters: Near infrared reflectance spectroscope (NIRS).
• Uninterrupted feeding system (SAI): oven, NIRS and SPS Soho+ Salicru.
• For determination of crude fiber, acid detergent and neutral fiber content: Ankom 220 Fiber Analyzer.
• For determination of crude fat content: solvent extraction of fat ANKOM XT10 Extractor
• For determination of gross energy: Oxygen Bomb Calorimeter. Parr Instruments Company
• Nitrogen analysis equipment Dumas method
• Other equipment: balances, pH meters, thermoagitators, water baths and other standard laboratory equipment.

Chromatography station:

• Liquid Chromatography: Waters®ACQUITY UPLC / Waters® 2475 Fluorescence Multi-? Detector
• Gas Chromatography: Scion Instruments 436-GC / HP 4890D Gas Chromatograph. Agilent Technologies
• Protein analyzer: CE Instruments NA 2100 Protein Analyser

Centrifugation area:

• UV/Vis spectrophotometer: Helios ?. Thermo Electron Corporation
• Microcentrifuge: MC12V. Sorvall
• Rotovapor: RVC 2-25 Christ
• Incubator with agitation.
• Ultrasonic bath: Ultrasons-HD. J.P. Selecta®.
• Freezer -80ºC
• Other equipment: refrigerated centrifuges, vacuum packing machine, other standard laboratory equipment.

Lyophilization area:

• Lyophilizer: VirTis Genesis Wizard 2.0
• Chamber -20ºC. IMPARI

Muffle and milling area:

• P Selecta® Oven.
• Two electric muffle ovens:   Heron 10-PR/400 (1,000ºC) and P Selecta®.
• Mill. Restch® (another large mill is available in a separate building).
• Large capacity forced air drying ovens: AFA. Dycometal Testing Technology and P Selecta®.

In addition, there is an experimental building equipped for sheep artificial lactation tests and for in situ digestibility tests on cannulated animals. It is equipped with metabolic cages and the rest of the usual facilities in a production farm.