Nutrient analysis data comes from the Settings > Edit Foods section. All values should be entered on an “as fed” basis. This is the default format used by most nutrient databases, even though many nutritionists are more familiar with working with things on a dry matter basis.

By default, ZDN will average all values for a given food. Typically, this is what you want for formulating diets because, over time, animals will receive the average of many different lots. However, if you want to use the most recent values (for example, if you want to look at what a diet looks right now like using the current lots of hay/fish/etc.), then in Settings, select the “most recent” option.

The built-in data is not current, should not be relied on, and is there for demonstration purposes only. There is an effort afoot to get more up-to-date and curated information for not only ZDN, but other uses as well. In the meantime, if you are relying on ZDN for diet analysis, we highly recommend replacing the built-in data with your own analyses.

Each time you click the Analysis button, a fresh copy of the data will be exported to the Excel template, using either the average or the most recent values (as set up in Settings). If you save the Excel sheet, you will have a record of what went into your decision making and what data you had at that point in time. As you expand your nutrient data, the values may change and newer Excel sheets may have different data than older ones. For this reason, we recommend you save the Excel sheets as you generate them so you have a historical record of what knowledge you had at the time you made various diet decisions, as you will not be able to recreate this moment in time in the future. Future exports will use the data available in the future, which may be different.