Dr Maurice LEGOY and extrusion technology:
25 years experience in conventional animal feeds

After graduating as a docteur in veterinary medecine at Paris Veterinary University in Alfort, Dr Maurice Legoy started his professionnal carrier as full time nutrition consultant to Sanders animal feed Company, technical adviser and premixes supplier to about 180 animal feed mills marketing their production in France exclusively under Sanders logo. He then become both witness and actor of the post-war expansion of the animal feed industry and in the development of the intensive animal production. He was then in charge of new products formulation, particularly the calf milk replacers, an item very important in France where consumers are so fond of traditionnal recipes for cooking veal white meat.

After 10 years with Sanders, Dr LEGOY started his own premixes and specialty feeds company in 1968. In 1978, he traveled to U. S., in order to find new ideas to develop his buiseness and he finds out about extrusion and extruders, and perceive what this then new technology could afford for animal feed production.

At that time, extruders were generally sophisticated machines, expensive to buy, difficult to drive, costly in wearing spare parts. The operating costs were too high to produce animal feeds and they were mainly used to manufacture human food and feeds for pets that were starting to expand.

By the end of 1978, an imported simple so-called "lost cost dry extruder" (from INSTA-PRO) was installed in Dievet premises and put to cook full fat soya beans. The machine was very crude, needing close continuous watch, with low output (500 kg/hour) and very fragile (bearing box and extrusion shaft).

Nevertheless, the end products were of the highest quality and Dievet started marketing extruded ingredients designed to be included in classical feed formulas :

- extruded full fat soya beans
- extruded wheat and cereal mixes for piglet feeds
- by-pass protein concentrates for high-producing milking cows
- extruded cereals+urea protein supplements for ruminants on corn silage diets.

Many tests were initiated in different stations of INRA (National Institute of Agronomic Research) at Jouy en Josas, Nouzilly, Ploufragan, Theix, etc, to define nutritional value of the new extruded ingredients and their incorporation in the formulas of the different feeds for poultry, layers, pigs and cattle. Main topics studied were energetic value of extruded full fat soya for chicken, turkey, laying hens and pigs; rumen degradability of extruded by- pass protein and nitrogen release speed in extruded urea-protein supplements.

Despite the high price charged by Dievet for their products, due to very low output of the machine and to the high operating costs (breakdowns, high cost of wearing spare parts, necessity of continous watch), the high quality of the marketed ingredients made the sales developping rapidly. Unable to find on the market the equipment to suit their needs, Dievet decided to build a new extruder type with a local bureau specialised in new machines designing and building (SETREM). The specification aimed at were :

- improved bearing and shaft robustness;
- modular screw design to suit a wide range of raw materials and finished products, including specialty feeds (petfoods, aquaculture);
- low cost of wearing spare parts (casted screws and restriction locks);
- improved output without impairing the quality of finished products through liquid and steam injection inside the barrel extruder and preconditioning of the mixes to be extruded;
- cutter easy positioning to the barrel end, for flexibility in shifting from a kind of produts to another one.

The INOTEC extruder was born...

Extruded ingredients soon became the main items sold to feed manufacturers (26.000 tons in 1985) by DIEVET. New units equipped with INOTEC extruders for soya bean extrusion were built in Brittany and South-West France, and also in several foreign countries for completion of FAO projects of soya beans cultivation and their heat treatment for poultry production in Spain an Turkey for instance.

Dievet's know-how in extrusion technology was acknolegded in France and several european countries :design of extrusion lines, starting up of Inotec extruders, training for operators, assistance for feed formulation. Dievet people were consulted for new lines of extrusion : extruded raw materials, specialty feeds (pets, fish and shrimps, laboratory animals etc), by-products treatment and valorisation, powders' agglomeration for industrial products, human nutrition in developping countries (nutritional supplements for pregnant women and underfed children). To date, INOTEC extruders have been exported to more than 20 differents counties all over the world, including China, South America and U.S.

Theese demands have lead Inotec to built or select machines to improve the efficiency of extrusion lines through milling, mixing, water and steam conditioning before extrusion, drying of moitured specialty feeds, etc...

When it was sold in 1991 to UFAC, DIEVET S. A. was indeed the french extrusion service company.

Since 1994, when he retired, Dr Maurice LEGOY went on to be interested in extrusion technology, keeping close cooperation with SETREM and INOTEC INTERNATIONAL to ever improve the utilisation of Inotec extruders in the animal feeds sector. With his broad experience both in extrusion and in animal nutrition, he is able to devote a lot of free time to keep in touch with the new developments of the extrusion tecniques through INTERNET. He is still a well recognized expert in extrusion application for animal feed production. He might be of assistance to people willing to improve the nutritional quality of so-called "industrial" animal foodstuffs, aimed at satisfying consumers' desire for products useful to their good health and well-being.