Carotenoids

Carotenoids for Animal Nutrition and Health

Carotenoids play a key role in supporting animal health and animal reproduction. With more than 50 years’ experience in accurate carotenoid supplementation, we continue to break new ground in this important field.

Why Carotenoids?

Carotenoids are essential for animal reproduction and good health. They play many crucial roles in farm animals, in areas including:

Egg production
Pigmentation
Fertility and reproduction
Egg quality
Animal welfare
Reducing food loss and waste

Carotenoids for Product Quality

Carotenoids also play a critical role in ensuring product quality and meeting consumer expectations, which vary by market. Appropriate carotenoid supplementation supports sales and prevents food wastage.

Carotenoids Solutions

CAROPHYLL®

We offer additives that allow consistent delivery of precisely-pigmented egg yolks, poultry skin and fish.
MaxiChick®

Hen culling, infertility, embryo mortality and low-quality chicks cost the poultry industry worldwide a lot of money annually. To combat this, we have developed MaxiChick®, a specific and published patent solution to boost the productivity of the breeder flock.
ROVIMIX® ß-Carotene

β-Carotene is an essential nutrient for all farmed stock. As it is only found in plants and cannot be synthesized by livestock, animals’ requirements of this nutrient must be fulfilled by their diet.

Ensuring Consistent Pigmentation

Carotenoids are essential naturally occurring anti-oxidants with pigmenting capabilities. Their most important role in poultry farming and aquaculture is their ability to improve the color of egg yolk, chicken skin and fish flesh. For consumers, the right color is a key indicator of quality.

All animals need carotenoids, but since they cannot produce these naturally-occurring nutrients themselves, they must obtain them from their diet:

Poultry feed and aqua feed (salmon feed, trout feed…) need to be supplemented with carotenoids in appropriate levels to achieve consistent, on-target pigmentation and improve reproductive indicators.
In dairy feed, carotenoids will increase fertility.

The challenge also lies in providing livestock with consistent supply as carotenoid content varies in different feedstuffs.

Thanks to our globally recognized digital YolkFan™ and SalmoFan™, customers anywhere in the world can fine-tune product color to meet specific market requirements and achieve consistent, on-target pigmentation.™

Introducing the dsm-firmenich Animal Nutrition & Health webshop

Discover our webshop, your go-to source for color measurement tools in the feed and food industry. Purchase the SalmoFan™ for consistent salmon pigmentation and the YolkFan™ for accurate egg yolk color assessment, ensuring your products meet the highest standards.

Enjoy the convenience of shopping from home with detailed product information, secure payment options, and prompt delivery.

Go to webshop

Accurate Egg Yolk Color

Consumers associate egg yolk color with nutritional value and animal welfare. This is correct: a golden egg yolk always comes from a healthy hen.

Dietary supplementation with precise levels of carotenoids is easily achievable with the aid of our yolk color chart, the ANH website change DSM to dsm-firmenich YolkFan™. This globally recognized tool, which has provided the industry benchmark in pigmentation measurement for the past six decades, is now complemented by the digital YolkFan™ Pro. Offering consistency, objectivity and ease of data storage, the digital YolkFan™ Pro provides clear guidance on pigmentation of chicken skin, tarso and egg yolk.

Accurate Salmon Flesh Color

Consumers associate salmon color with nutritional value and animal welfare. And indeed, pink flesh always comes from a healthy fish.

Our well-established salmon color chart, the SalmoFan™ for farmed salmon is now complemented by the digital SalmoFan™, a portable and user-friendly color sensor device for the precise digital color measurement of salmon fillets. Designed to work under all light conditions, the digital SalmoFan™ offers the aquaculture industry an important tool for controlling product quality and meeting consumer expectations.

Dairy Cow Fertility

The natural Beta-carotene content of forages in animal diets varies, and dairy feed based on corn silage and cereal grains is particularly lacking in this essential nutrient. Accurate supplementation ensures that dairy feed consistently supply sufficient beta-carotene to support dairy cow fertility and thus healthy cows’ reproduction.

ROVIMIX® β-Carotene increases ovulation rates and heat expression. It also raises progesterone levels, which in turn reduces embryo mortality rates, while improving the embryo quality.

dsm-firmenich Product Forms:
Quality feed additives for more sustainable farming

Vitamins and other micro-nutrients are essential for the life and well-being of animals. Thanks to its intense engagement in research, innovation and development, dsm-firmenich Vitamins and other feed additives consistently contribute to achieving the best balance between Handling, Mixability, Stability and Bioavailability, depending on the specific application challenges that each nutrient may face.