Bone meal, bone ash, bone flour, bone charcoal, bone black

Description: 

Often the sketetal system (bones) is seperated from meat during the processing of meat. These bones can then be converted into bone meal using several different methods. Bones like animal by-products should be adequately heated inorder to assure that disease organisms are not spread. Bone meal can be used to provide a source of calcium, phosphorus and other minerals in livestock feeding programs. It can be used to replace dicalcium phosphate, which can be made from bones by treating them with a caustic and then with HCl and then precipitating with lime and drying, or other routinely used calcium and phosphorus sources.Source: By-product of slaughtering of livestock and rendering of dead animals.

Processing and Types of Bone Meals:

Fresh bone meal (green bone meal) is prepared by drying and grinding fresh bones. Since adequate heat is not always applied during the drying process this product can contain disease organisms. 

Bone meal (raw bone meal) is prepared by boiling bones in water until all adhering material has been removed, then it is dried and ground. 

Steamed bone meal is cooked in a pressurized cooker to remove fat and other materials, then dried and ground. Special steamed bone meal is prepared when bone collagen is extracted for the preparation of gelatin and glue. 

Bone meal ash (calcinated bone meal) is prepared by ashing (burning) the bone in the presence of air (bone charcoal) or without of air (bone black).

Feed Systems: 

There are no limitations on using bone meal to replace other dietary calcium and phosphorus sources. Care needs to be taken when formulating rations to assure that the calcium and phosphorus ratio don’t get out of the acceptable range.

Feeding Experiments: 

Bone meal has been demostrated to be a highly available supplemental source of calcium and phosphorus for both ruminant and monogastric animals. Researchers found it to be an excellent source of P in feeding dairy cattle (1)(AGRIS 1998-022310)(El-Hag, 1999). It was demostrated that it could replace dicalcium phosphate in swine rations (2)(AGRIS 91-104097)(Hynek, 1991). Fresh dried bones were shown to be an acceptable source of Ca and P for layers (3)(AGRIS 95-009646)(Rajic, 1993), but care should be taken that it is heated adequately to sure disease organisms are not being spread.