Introduction
Palm fatty acid distillate (PFAD), is a by product of refining palm oil. A primary market for PFAD is the animal feed industry. It is valuable as a feed ingredient due to its high energy content, readily available, relatively stable to oxidant rancidity and inexpensive. It is normally used as fatty acids, as hydrogenated fatty acids or as calcium salts of fatty acids.

PFAD As Feed Ingredient

PFAD, also known as Palm Fatty Acid Distillate is very useful as a feed ingredient.
Main components are unesterified fatty acids with a minor component of triglycerols.
As for fatty acid profile, palmitic acid (C16) make up 45% - 55%, oleic acid (C18:1) about 35% with lesser amounts of linoleic (C18:2) and stearic acids (C18:0).
PFAD's most important contribution to nutrition is to provide a source of energy.
Its low unsaturation and high content of antioxidants also helps promote oxidative stability, which makes it a valuable feed ingredient.

During lactation cycle, dairy cattle requires sufficient energy in order to produce high quantity of milk.
Although forages provides a good amount of energy, excessive feeding of cereals will lead to ruminal acidosis and digestive upset which will reduce milk yield and milk fat percent.
Increasing fat content of dairy diets might be an alternative to feeding excessive cereals, but it will compromise ruminal fibre digestion.
Hence, a good solution would be to feed calcium salts of fatty acids, which are utilised by the cattle without compromising ruminal fermentation and microbial growth.
Calcium salts of fatty acids are widely established as the standard feed supplements for increasing energy for dairy cows.
Studies showed that calcium salts of fatty acids in the cow's diet increases milk yield without compromising milk fat percent.
Feeding calcium salts of fatty acids also significantly increases digestibility of feed neutral detergent fibre (NDF), whereas feeding tallow decreased NDF digestibility.