Nutritional value of field peas

Posted in: Prairie Swine Centre by admin on January 1, 1997 | No Comments

Field peas are used increasingly as a source for protein and energy in swine diets in Western Canada. The variability for the every value of field peas has been described poorly. Yet, effective diet formulation requires a clear understanding of not only average nutritional value, but also its variability. The objective of the present study was to determine the range of digestible energy (DE) content in samples of 11 field pea varieties grown on a single quarter section of land. The DE ranged from 3098 to 3739 kcal/kg; thus, the difference in DE between the highest and lowest value was 20%. Despite being grown under similar conditions, energy value for sample differed greatly among samples and variation in DE was greater than expected. Due to the fact nutritionists try to formulate diets within an accuracy of 1.5%, the issue of ingredient variability represents an area of significant economic opportunity.

Stereotypies in heifers are affected by feeding regime.

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Prepartum behavior in swine: effects of pen size.

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Modeling dust concentration in livestock buildings.

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Limited research has investigated the spatial variability of dust within livestock building. Research is needed to gain a better understanding of the transport and removal of particulate contaminants within these facilities. This study was conducted to model dust concentration distribution in enclosed livestock buildings. Existing mathematical models that can be used for predicting spatial and temporal distribution of particulates contaminants within ventilated spaces were reviewed. Based on these models, a simplified macroscopic model was developed. The model considers the effects of turbulent diffusive deposition, gravitational settling, coagulation and airflow. Effects of particles size were also investigated. Results of the implementation of the initial version of the model are presented.

Evaluation of Different Methods of Measuring NH3 Emission in Naturally Ventilated Animal Houses with Deep Litter

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The results obtained from this study are about 5 times higher (50 g NH3 / animal per day vs. 3 to 18 in other studies). Experimental conditions could be accountable for those differences but no further analysis is made.

Bioscrubber for Removing Ammonia from Swine House Exhaust Air

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The results presented don’t show the performances of the system on a long operation period and important fluctuations happened during the short period of 15 days. It would be difficult to extrapolate the behavior of the scrubber on the base of such a short term experiment.

The EQIP incentive – Legislators set new environmental program in motion

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The Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) has a budget of $1.3 billion of $200 million/ year (authorized by the federal government) to help farmers and ranchers deal with serious threats to soil and water related to natural resource problems. 65% of the funding will be oriented to priority areas (watersheds or other sensitive areas) identified by the states and the budget is to be split evenly between crop and livestock productions. The Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) – EQIP’s monitoring agency – is confident this program is going to get result because of his local level aims.
In addition to priority areas, farmers and ranchers can create a conservation plan for their sites. On a 5 to 10 years contracts basis, if their plan is accepted they can receive up to $10 000/year for a maximum sum of $50 000/contract . Certain conservation practices such as grassed waterways, filter strips or manure management facilities can be cost shared to up to 75%.
The EQIP Funds should not go for large operations as demanded by the Congress, so the NRCS used the same rules as other federal and states programs and the admissible livestock operations should not exceed 1000 animal units. As the program should adjust to the local needs, states could argue for a different guideline. The National Pork Producers Council consider that this figure is restricting considering the new trends in swine production and is concerned about the distribution in priority watersheds. An NRCS employee will be working with the NPPC members to make sure the program is well understood and used on different environmental projects.
The program will adjust as people at local level get engaged and states cooperate, and as the resources priorities get defined.
//This project is very interesting however no mention on education is made. Often to integrate new techniques and practices and education becomes. Education can also trigger other initiatives that may not be funded by the EQIP and produce important changes were big money is not involved.

Humane, Sustainable Feeder Pig Production; Transferring a Technology Developed in Sweden to Midwestern Hog Farms

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A cooperative project is currently being done to integrate to some Iowa farms models of more human and sustainable pig production systems developed by Swedish farmers in response to increasing environmental, animal welfare, consumer protection pressure and also in response to specific regulations in Sweden. The models tested were chosen considering swine welfare swine and maternal behavior of sows observations obtained in experimental settings that were semi-natural. Management-intensive, deep-bedded, group housing system for gestating, farrowing and nursing sows and their litter are tested in 3 cooperating Minnesota and Iowa farms including on the Armstrong Research and Demonstration Farm (Lewis, Iowa) of the Iowa State University. Monitoring of the adoption and adjustment processes is realized and preliminary results show that Midwestern hog farmers could benefit from the Swedish model however attentive and consistant high-level management is required to obtain good production performances.

This production is likely to produce ammonia and nitrous oxide as other systems on litter. However no information is given and no measurements on those gases were done. These systems are more time consuming for the manure management.

Passive versus Active Aeration for Composting.

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Three different material, pine shaving, grass hay and wheat straw, have been used as substrate for swine manure composting. Substrate – manure mixes at 40, 32 and 28% dry matter were passively (ducts installed under the compost pile) and actively (2 ml of air/s per kg of original dry matter) aerated in duplicate during 21 days. The temperature measured in both aeration regimes gave similar values and reaches damaging temperatures (above 65 C) where the microbial activity stops. However more drying of the compost material was observed with the active aeration. The convective air flux seemed to be related to microbial activity and heat generation rather than the temperature differential between the compost and the ambient air. Further work is needed to better understand the phenomena that acting on the temperature.
Composting is a way to stabilize manure and to reduce odour emissions also. However in order to obtain a good quality compost, the temperature have to stay in a certain range between 55 to 65 C. No results show the compost composition after the 21 days but composting process is known to result in ammonia and nitrous oxide emissions which are detrimental to the environment.

Environmentally friendly diet reduces phosphorus loss

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Growing pig need phosphorus to grow, to have a good feed conversion, to produce a lean carcass and also to have strong bones (bones with a good mineral level). The phosphorus contained in the feedgrains is poorly used by the digestive track of the growing pigs because an important portion of it is bound in the form of phytate: 66% of the phosphorus in the corn and 61% in the soybean. So the feed industry supplement the pig’s diet using inorganic phosphorus sources (monocalcium phosphate, dicalcium phosphate and deflourinated phosphate. The supplemented diet gives the pig the phosphorus it needs and the unavailable or unusable phosphorus (phytate) gets release in the manure produced by the animal. The problem with the excess phosphorus in the manure is that when fertilization is done according to the plant’s nitrogen needs, the volume applied contains more phosphorus than the plant needs. The excess phosphorus is relatively immobile and is absorbed onto soil particles.
Microbial phytase, an enzyme produce by the Aspergillus niger, can be added to the diet of the pigs to make the phytate phosphorus contained in the grains available. Experiments have shown significant reduction in the phosphorus excretion with pigs fed low phosphorus diets containing phytase (of 20 to 40% at the University of Kentucky and in the Netherlands where phytase is used in 60% of the swine rations, the phosphorus contain has decreased from .73 g/lb. of manure in 1973 to .30g/lb of manure in 1995) .
A specialist for the Netherlands, Age Jongbloed, mention that so far the nutritional approach has been the one leading to the most significant reduction in pollution and is the most cost efficient.
The microbial form of phytase from BASF company (Bart Cousins, Fort Dodge, IA) costs $1.36/lb and 0.8lb/ton should be added to complete feed providing 136 phytase units/lb.
Phytase added to the feed should be well mixed and as it is an enzyme no heating process should be done after incorporated. A liquid form can be sprayed on the pellets.

As mentioned, the phosphorus in excess will be stored in the soil. At a high concentration, the phosphorus will leach to the surface water. Thus it is important to prevent phosphorus from being excessively stored in the soil. Phytase is a good and effective way of doing it because the feed is used more efficiently by the pigs and less phosphorus is excreted in the manure.