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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:
Component and Factor Analysis of Pork Farm Odour using Structural Learning with the Forgetting Method
Posted in: Environment by admin on January 1, 2006 | No Comments
In pig farming, odour measurement and reduction are necessary for a cleaner environment, lower health risks to humans, and higher quality of pig production. There have been many studies on the modelling of pork farm odour by analysing the chemical components in odorous air. It is suggested that the component analysis approach should be extended to factors such as temperature, relative humidity, and airflow speed. However, previous component and factor analysis did not examine which components or factors contribute significantly to a complex odour. A relative contribution analysis of potential odour components and factors to the perception of odour would allow identification of significant odour components and major contributing factors. Odour reduction practice for pork farms could then be directed towards the significant components and factors, thus improving the efficiency in developing odour measurement and reduction technologies. It is generally accepted that neural networks have several advantages over conventional techniques, for instance, their ability to automatically learn the relationship between the inputs and outputs without any previous
knowledge of the system being studied, their powerful generalisation ability, and their capability of handling non-linear interactions. However, typical neural network models suffer from the so-called ‘black box’ problem, i.e. it offers no information about the system other than the input/output relationship. In this paper, existing methods for odour strength prediction were reviewed, and a neural network based multi-component multi-factor odour model was developed. To reveal the relative contribution of the inputs, the neural network was trained using an algorithm called structural learning with forgetting. By applying the structural learning with forgetting based algorithm, unnecessary neural connections faded away and a skeletal network emerged. The resulted skeletal network enabled an analysis of the contribution of components and factors. The effectiveness of the proposed approach was demonstrated by simulation and comparison studies.
An Overview of Danish Pork Industry Integration and Structure
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In the beginning of the 1970s there were 40 to 50 cooperative slaughterhouses in Denmark, and in 2005 the number has decreased to 2. Today, Denmark processes 22 million pigs equalling 1.9 million tons of pork. Danish Crown is the biggest pig processor in the European Union, accounting for 8% of the pigs slaughtered. The Danish pork industry is highly export oriented (85% exported). The cooperative structure of the Danish pork industry is considered a very important factor in the success of the industry on a global basis because they can develop a very high level of food safety and traceability. The Danish pork industry has built its reputation on the capabilities of supplying requested volumes and quality of pork to processors all over the world. Denmark has implemented a system for full traceability of the individual animal from farm to slaughterhouse. Denmark has strong research capacities within primary production and processing of pigs. Environmental regulations and scarcity of land have put a limit on future expansion of pig production. In the future, pork trade will increase particularly in Japan, China, and South East Asia, each of which Denmark already exports to. Increased competitiveness must come from economies of scale, flexibility, proximity to the market, and increased internationalization.
Ammonia Emissions from Swine Waste Lagoons in the Utah Great Basin
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Source-Related Transport of Phosphorus in Surface Runoff
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A two-step fed SBR for treating swine manure
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New Board Members Appointed
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Saskatoon, SK., April 25, 2006: Dr. John Patience, President and CEO of the Prairie Swine Centre wishes to announce the appointment of two members of the Board of Directors at the Centre’s recent Annual Meeting. Joining the Board to fill a seat representing the grains industry is Mr. Arlee McGrath from Leroy SK. Representing the University of Saskatchewan on the Board will be Dr. Bryan Schreiner.
Arlee and Shirley McGrath operate a grain and livestock farm near Leroy, SK. McGrath Farms is an innovative joint venture grain operation involving a strategy of continuous education, marketing a variety of cereals, oilseeds, pulses and nutraceutical products. In 1997, McGrath Farms expanded into the livestock industry with the opening of Sinnett Pork Farm Ltd. Arlee has been a Sask Wheat Pool delegate, Saskatchewan Crop Insurance Board member, and is currently involved with the National APF Review Panel as well as the Saskatchewan CAISP Appeals Group.
Dr. Bryan Schreiner is Director of Research Services and Assistant to the Vice-President of Research at the University of Saskatchewan, positions he has held since 2003. During the previous 21 years, he was with the Saskatchewan Research Council, most recently as Vice-President of the Environment Branch. Dr. Schreiner was formerly a Director of the Canadian Council of Professional Engineers and President of Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Saskatchewan (APEGS). Bryan is an elected Fellow of the Geological Association of Canada.
Eric Peters, a pork producer from Steinbach, Manitoba and a Director since 2003, has been elected the Chair of the Board, replacing outgoing chair Bryan Perkins, a grain and pork producer from Wainwright, AB who served on the Board for 6 years.
Prairie Swine Centre Inc., located near Saskatoon, is a non-profit research corporation affiliated with the University of Saskatchewan, and is recognized globally for its contributions to practical, applied science in pork production in the disciplines of Nutrition, Engineering and Animal Behaviour.
The interaction of dietary energy and phytase on the performance of weanling pigs.
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SUMMARY
Adding 500 FTU/kg phytase enzyme to a barley, corn, SBM diet improved the performance of weanling pigs, regardless of the energy content of the diet. Growth of pigs fed low energy diets deficient in available P was equal to that of a high energy diet with sufficient aP.
INTRODUCTION
Approximately 60 to 80% of the phosphorus (P) in cereal grains and oil seeds is bound to phytate and unavailable to monograstics, including swine. Supplementing swine diets with the phytase enzyme improves P availability and retention (ie. Prairie Swine Centre, Inc., Annual Research Report, 2004). The phytate molecule complexes other minerals, proteins, and starch, however, the research examining the effect of the phytase enzyme on the utilization of these nutrients has demonstrated inconsistent responses and the conclusions are equivocal.
Phytase, a protein, is subject to heat damage and is thus not suitable for use in pelleted diets. However, the developer of the enzyme used in this study reported improved thermotolerance, thus we examined the efficacy of this enzyme in pelleted diets.
The overall objective of this experiment was to examine the interaction between phytase and dietary energy content. Secondly, the results we report are relevant for producers using pelleted feed.
EXPERIMENTAL PROCEDURES
The experiment used a total of 406 pigs housed in two nurseries of 28 pens each. Pigs were started on the 42-day trial at 5 days post weaning (9.30 ± 0.51 kg). Pigs were blocked by weight and assigned to one of 7 dietary treatments. The treatments consisted of a positive control (PC) and 6 treatments arranged as a 3 x 2 factorial (3 dietary energy levels x 2 phytase levels). Diets were fed in two phases; phase 1 was fed for 2 weeks and phase 2 for 4 weeks. Diets were formulated using barley, corn, soybean meal, canola oil, spray dried plasma, red blood cells, and the necessary minerals, vitamins and amino acids to meet the requirements (except P) for pigs of this age. Energy, Ca and P content of the treatment diets is described in Table 1.
Pigs and feed intake were determined weekly. Faecal samples were collected at the end of each phase which will allow the determination of nutrient digestibility (to be reported later).
RESULTS and DISCUSSION
Supplementing diets with 500 FTU phytase/kg increased average daily gain (ADG) from 500 to 560 g/d (P < 0.01), feed intake (ADFI) from 900 to 950 g/d (P < 0.01) and feed efficiency (FCE) from 0.58 to 0.62 (P < 0.05; Figure 1, Table 2). Increasing the energy content linearly improved ADG and FCE (P < 0.02), and quadratically improved ADFI (P < 0.03). The phytase by energy interaction was not significant for any performance variable. This indicates that the improvement observed with phytase is not dependent on dietary energy content (Table 2).
The ADG of pigs fed the PC diet, which was formulated to be adequate in Ca and P, and was higher in energy than the treatment diets, was similar to the ADG of pigs fed a diet containing 3.45 Mcal DE/kg regardless of phytase supplementation. When the pigs were fed the lower energy and 0 phytase treatment diets (treatments 4 and 6) the ADG was lower than seen with the PC (P < 0.05). However, the ADG of the low energy treatment diets was similar to the PC when these diets were supplemented with phytase (P > 0.05; Figure 1). From these results we conclude that the phytase enzyme, either directly or indirectly, improved energy availability to the pigs fed the lower energy diets in this experiment.
In our earlier work , the apparent digestibility of energy was not affected when weanling pigs were fed diets supplemented with 500 FTU/kg phytase. This both agrees and disagrees with various experiments reported by others. This discrepancy may be due to differences among experiments in nutrient concentrations, ingredients and length of feeding period. Explaining the effect of the phytase enzyme on overall performance is more apparently more complex than simply meeting the P requirements of the pig.
CONCLUSION
An improvement in performance was observed when weanling pigs were fed lower energy diets and supplemented with phytase. Further research is needed to fully elucidate the mechanism responsible for this observation. The phytase enzyme retained efficacy when used in pelleted diets.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Strategic funding provided by Sask Pork, Alberta Pork, Manitoba Pork Council and Saskatchewan Agriculture and Food Development Fund. Specific funding for this project from Syngenta Animal Nutrition is gratefully acknowledged.