Earlier in May, I had the privilege of attending and chairing a session at the inaugural Advancing Milling & Nutrition (AMN) Conference held at Melbourne’s Crown Promenade. The event brought together a remarkable mix of people from the milling, feed manufacturing, animal nutrition, and livestock production sectors. It was the first time this group had come together under one banner, and it couldn’t have come at a better time.
The AMN Conference, run alongside Recent Advances in Animal Nutrition – Australia (RAAN-A) and the Australasian Equine Science Symposium (AESS), filled an important gap in the landscape. The sessions were designed to bridge the space between high-level research and real-world application. What I appreciated most was the conference’s commitment to answering the all-important question: “So what?” How do we take world-class research and actually apply it in a feed mill, a nutrition program, or a production shed?
For those of us working in poultry, this couldn’t be more relevant. Feed is not just the biggest cost input in poultry production, it’s also one of the most important determinants of bird health, welfare, and performance. From digestibility and gut microbiome dynamics to sustainable ingredients and precision feeding, the topics covered during the conference had clear takeaways for our sector.
Charing a session gave me a unique opportunity to facilitate conversation between academic experts and commercial leaders, conversations that often revealed where the barriers to adoption are, and where we as a research community can do better to support practical outcomes. The honesty and openness in the room was refreshing. People were ready to move past theory and talk about implementation, bottlenecks, and where future collaboration might lead to real impact.
There was also a strong sense of shared purpose. Whether someone was presenting on mycotoxin risks in stored grain or the future of precision nutrition through AI tools, everyone was focused on the same outcome: improving animal outcomes through smarter, science-backed feeding practices. And there was a collective understanding that the value of that work goes well beyond just productivity, it’s about sustainability, resilience, and animal care too.
For Poultry Hub Australia, this kind of conference is gold. It gives us insight into what producers and feed manufacturers are prioritising, where the science is heading, and where we can help connect the dots. More importantly, it reaffirms the importance of our core mission: to drive innovation in the poultry sector that is useful, usable, and used.
I came away from AMN energised, encouraged, and with a notebook full of new ideas and connections. It’s a reminder that when science, practice, and people come together in the right way, we can achieve remarkable things for our industry.
