Nutritional quality of wheat and barley can vary substantially. Ignoring this variation can economically impact swine producers by reducing growth performance of the animals. Two solutions have been derived to allow feeding of low quality wheat and barley while maintaining growth performance, correcting the diet formulation to achieve the formulated diet digestible energy (DE) content, or enzyme supplementation. For both solutions a correct prediction of DE is critical. An increase in fibre resulted in decreased energy digestibility and reduced DE as expected, enforcing the importance of ingredient evaluation. The range in DE of wheat reflects a range in economic value of more than $15.00/tonne of wheat used for swine feed.
Wheat supplemented with carbohydrase enzyme should help the pig to digest energy because negative effects of fibre fractions on energy digestibility will be alleviated. Digestibility was improved in two of the three samples, further stressing the importance of ingredient evaluations. Particle size also affects energy digestibility as digestive enzymes have greater access to nutrients in finer particle sizes. Low quality wheat has a greater fibre content and lower energy digestibility than high quality wheat. The above solutions can help minimize the effects of low quality wheat.