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Industry Partners
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:
Gestating sows prefer concentrate diets to high-fibre diet in two-choice tests
Posted in: Production by admin on January 1, 2007 | No Comments
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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Characterization of Salmonella Bacteriophages Isolated from Swine Lagoon Effluent
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Increasing Drinking Water Use Efficiency in a Commercial Alberta Pork Production Facility
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A practical and economical comparison of water drinkers on a commercial hog facility was conducted. Over the course of a one-year trial, from August 2004 to July 2005, the ball-bite drinker sections of the barn used 35 per cent less water than the standard drinker sections, as measured by the farm’s water monitoring system. These water savings had no detrimental effects on the animals or facility management. Instead, the significant decrease in water usage led to many secondary benefits. Electrical savings occurred from not having to pump the extra 35 per cent of water (in this case 133,149 litres). Less water means less manure. Manure can be spread on the land less often – saving money, time and odour issues with the neighbours (because of fewer applications). Solids build-up causes great problems when removing manure from a facility to apply to the land. However, having less water did not complicate the process of removing manure from the barns assuaging concerns of solid build-up. Reducing the manure volume and total water used in a commercial hog rearing facility results in reductions in greenhouse gas emissions mainly due to less petroleum and electrical energy consumed in handling the manure liquid. Decreasing the amount of energy required delivering water to the barn and distributing it throughout the facility will ultimately decrease the total water system energy load. During manure pump-out and field application, a decrease in fossil fuel use to operate machinery will also be realized. This may prove to decrease the costs of applying the liquid, as less total volume of manure will be handled. Efficient water use allows producers to achieve efficiency gains with minimal capital cost. Reducing the quantity of water used in commercial pig facilities will prolong the life of useful ground water resources, thus prolonging the useful life of groundwater wells on the property. Producers using dugouts for water storage will decrease the requirements for sourcing water to fill these dugouts throughout the year. This project suggested that replacing the standard drinkers with ball-bite drinkers resulted in a payback period of approximately 3.5 months and an increase in annual net income of $1,584 on a $463 investment. The analysis was based on an operation with 500 pigs per cycle and one nipple drinker for every 15 pigs. Overall, the strength of this technology lies in the fact that it is simple, environmentally friendly and profitable.
Neutralization of soil acidity by animal manures: mechanism of reaction
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