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Prairie Swine Centre is an affiliate of the University of Saskatchewan
Prairie Swine Centre is grateful for the assistance of the George Morris Centre in developing the economics portion of Pork Insight.
Financial support for the Enterprise Model Project and Pork Insight has been provided by:
Opportunities for Co-Product Utilization in Western Canada
Posted in: Production by admin on January 1, 2007 | No Comments
Overall, the markets of swine feed can be divided into two categories, the large volume, low margin diet market such as for grower-finisher pigs and the low volume, higher margin diet market such as for weaned pigs. For each category, specific sets of co-products will be used. The first category focuses more on the traditional market of co-(or by-) products from food or bio-processing. The second category will become an attractive market for the specific fractions created for feed purposes. This paper summarizes this vision and recent findings. The inclusion of co-products in feed will rapidly become economically attractive as the severity of grain shortage become evident. Initially, co-products will become attractive on a cost per tonne basis; their low inclusion rates should not hamper growth performance. Later on, when economics focus shifts more to cost per unit of productivity and less to maximization of growth performance, inclusion rates of these co-products might further increase. Starch fermentation and oil extraction results in these co-products being high in fibre and protein. Results of recent research using wheat DDGS (Widyaratne and Zijlstra 2007) and wheat millrun (Nortey et al. 2006) indicate that these co-products still provide valuable nutrients for swine, but also that their nutrient digestibility is reduced by fibre content. A range of processing techniques can be employed to fractionate crops. Overall, two groups exist, an up-front fractionation process allowing further processing of individual crop fractions and a process that involves the entire crop stock that separates one fraction the crop (as described before). Examples of the first group include dry milling and air classification, etc. Examples of the other group include current ethanol production procedures and oil extraction from canola. Dry separation techniques (dry milling/air classification) are particularly useful for the production of protein-rich fractions from non-oilseed legumes, such as field pea (Dijkstra et al. 2003). The advantages of dry over wet separation techniques are lower equipment and operational costs and the absence of effluents. However wet processing techniques usually result in fraction containing a higher protein or starch concentration. The feed use of value-added fractions further implies that not just the digestible nutrient content of these fractions should be described. Their functional properties relative to animal health, welfare, nutrient management, and pork quality must be considered but such benefits are not so tangible. Consideration of such benefits will ensure that their entire value and potential within commercial swine production can be reached. The rapid advancement of crop fractionation and the proliferation of processing facilities across North America will continue to drastically change the landscape for feedstuffs. In western Canada, the removal of transport subsidies provided a window of opportunity for the use of relatively abundant and affordable feed grains in the livestock industries. The emergence of the bio-fuel industry will place increasing pressure on the price and availability of feed grains, but should reduce the price pressure of protein-rich co-products. As a result, the use of these co-products is becoming rapidly more attractive. These co-products seem to fit now more often in the large volume low margin markets of grower-finisher pig feeds. Pork producers will have to explore these opportunities rapidly to remain competitive in the North America. The high-value crop fractions seem to fit the requirements of weaned pigs and in instances where specific functional attributes may enhance animal health, welfare, nutrient management or pork quality.
Where in the World to Grow Pigs? – Trends in U.S. Pork Production
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The United States and Canada have occupied premier positions as pork production locales for the past decade. Virtually nowhere else in the world has the combination of natural resources and know-how for pork production that exists in our two countries. Policy decisions and the changing world energy situation, however, are putting significant pressures on pork producers and processors in both countries; changing the future direction of both industries and causing us to re-think the two countries’ positions in the future world pork industry. This paper addresses several trends in the U.S. industry that are shaping it at present and that will continue to shape it in the future. The U.S. is expected to remain a major player in the world pork market but these forces could affect that position in coming years. Nothing is having a greater impact on current profitability and future plans than the growth of corn-based ethanol production in the U.S. Driven by higher oil prices, changes in oxygenating ingredients and widespread public support, the number of ethanol plants has expanded rapidly and continues to do so. These plants, not surprisingly, are generally located near major corn producing areas of the Midwest – the same place that the bulk of U.S. hog production is located. The demand for corn by ethanol plants is changing corn basis patterns drastically, driving up Iowa and Minnesota corn prices, and thus removing a major source of competitive advantage. As corn prices have risen, so have feed costs for U.S. pork producers. More than corn prices have driven the increase in feed costs. Soybean and soybean meal prices have risen as the soybean industry bids up prices in order to compete for crop acres. Higher feed prices and, now, lower hog prices have put an end to one of the most profitable periods in the history of the U.S. pork industry. However, consumer-level demand for pork in the U.S. has been more-or-less steady since the mid-1980s. 2006 marked the lowest level ever for the University of Missouri’s demand index but it rebounded some in 2007 and was 1.9% larger than in 2006 through August 2007. Export demand for U.S. pork remains strong even though productivity thus far in 2007 has been less than stellar. It appears likely that the U.S. will set its 16th straight record year for pork exports. U.S. productivity growth will resume over the next year or two. Much of the herd has now switched to later weaning and once that is accomplished, any true gains in sow productivity will be compared to the same production system one year earlier thus allowing the gain to show up in the data. In addition, circovirus vaccines are having the same “miraculous” impacts in the U.S. that they had in Canada and will thus begin to contribute greatly to productivity growth in terms of pigs reaching market weight and higher market weights as the number of light pigs is reduced. This has an impact on the U.S. hog cycle which can be traced back over 200 years, production changes being steadily and slightly positive over the past 3 years has made the hog cycle obsolete. Along with the demise of the hog cycle, is the presence of a highly inelastic hog demand that penalizes any large increases in output. The impacts of these trends on the U.S. climate for hog production is mixed. Environmental and social, small-farm pressure is still intense in many regions and serves to prohibit or at least significantly slow pork production expansion. Corn availability could well become an issue for industry expansion but many grain farmers are starting to question the wisdom of using corn for ethanol versus pigs simply due to the fact that ethanol doesn’t produce valuable crop nutrients in the form of manure. The pressure for more corn-on-corn production will enhance manure’s value and make pig feeding more attractive to many Midwestern grain operations. Whether the social climate will allow this production to happen remains to be seen. Things are changing but with change comes opportunity. It will be no different for the U.S. pork industry.
Gestating sows prefer concentrate diets to high-fibre diet in two-choice tests
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The feed preferences of gestating sows were investigated in sixteen Large White X Landrace nulliparous sows, when
offered feeds of different fibre and protein contents in two-choice preference tests carried out between their 8th
to 13th weeks of gestation.
Intake, digestibility and N retention by growing pigs fed ensiled or dried Taro (Colocasia esculenta) leaves as the protein supplement in basal diets of rice bran/broken rice or rice bran/cassava root meal
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Colocasia esculenta var. antiquorum known as Taro or Cocoyam is widely distributed in the humid tropics including India and
South East Asia. Taro is recognized as a large coarse herb with crowns of large oblong-oval leaves and an abundance of large
spherical underground tubers. Taro can be grown under flooded or upland conditions and it is one of the important crops for poor
resource farmers in the tropics. In Cambodia, Taro is known in Khmer as ‘Trao’. It is planted for home consumption of both tubers
and petioles. However, when there is production in excess of household needs, Taro leaves and petioles are cooked and fed to pigs.
Taro leaves are rich in protein, minerals and vitamins. The aim of the present experiment was to study the effect of ensiling or drying Taro leaves on intake, digestibility and N retention
of growing pigs given a basal diet of rice bran mixed with broken rice or rice bran mixed with cassava root meal. It was found that the apparently higher nutritive value of sun-dried compared with ensiled Taro leaves may have been caused by inadequacies in the ensiling process, resulting in excessive breakdown of the protein and poor palatability.
Also, the relatively high values of N retention (equivalent to about 250 g/day of live weight gain) and of retained N as a proportion of digested N in the diet with sun-dried Taro leaves, are indicative of a high biological value of the Taro leaf protein, especially it represented over 80% of the dietary crude protein these diets.
The effect on N2O emissions of storage conditions and rapid incorporation of pig and cattle farmyard manure into tillage land
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The use of additional straw in animal housing and the rapid incorporation of manure into
tillage land have been recognised as potential techniques to reduce ammonia (NH3)
emissions. However, there is the potential for these management practices to increase
nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions, i.e. ‘pollution swapping’. Emissions of N2O were monitored
during storage of either pig or cattle farmyard manure (FYM) and after application to tillage
land at two UK sites. Losses of N2O from conventionally stored pig and cattle FYM were
2.6% and 4.3% of the total-N into store, respectively. Following land spreading, N2O losses
ranged from o0.01% to 0.23% of total-N applied for stored manure, but up to 0.86% from
fresh pig FYM. There was no significant (probability P40.05) effect of extra straw use during
housing on N2O emissions following the spreading of pig and cattle FYM. No consistent
effect of FYM incorporation on N2O emissions was evident suggesting that rapid
incorporation (o4 h) can only reduce both N2O and NH3 losses under site specific
conditions. The results suggest that strategies to minimise N2O emissions from solid
manure management should focus on storage rather than land spreading, and that there is
a need to develop integrated manure management strategies to minimise ‘pollution
swapping’.
Improvement in post-treatment of digested swine wastewater
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