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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.
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Exploring Opportunities in Using Alternative Feedstuffs
Posted in: Nutrition, Pork Insight Articles, Prairie Swine Centre by admin on July 10, 2017
The current market prices of pigs and protein sources have forced the pork industry to explore ways to reduce feed costs while maintaining swine performance. Inclusion of opportunity ingredients that are normally not considered for diet formulation may be one such method. Some opportunity ingredients and their proper inclusion into swine diets will be discussed in the following paper.
Meat and bone meal: This ingredient is fairly low cost making it a suitable replacement for soybean meal. However the use of animal byproducts is controversial and depending on its source meat and bone meal can have a wide variety of nutrient levels. To avoid reductions in growth and performance this can only be included for around 5-7.5% in the diet.
Field peas: The DE content of field peas is difficult to predict making it hard to incorporate into diets however they are high in protein and energy content, this combined with high palatability makes them worthwhile for inclusion in swine diets.
Lentils: The optimum inclusion rate of lentils has not been determined thoroughly; however, one trial indicated that diets containing 40% ground lentils supported similar growth to a soybean meal-based diet and some western Canadian research indicated that 30% lentils could be included in diets fed to grower-finisher pigs without hampering pig performance. The protein content of lentils is on average slightly higher than in field peas. Similar to other legume seeds, lentils have a low sulphur amino acid content, and care must be taken during diet formulation to ensure that enough methionine in the right ratio to cystine is provided in the diet.
Corn DDGS: Corn DOGS has a similar DE content than the originating corn. Corn DOGS is especially high in oil content, and the main reason for upper inclusion levels for corn DOGS in diets for grower finisher pigs to prevent reductions in carcass quality and growth performance. Pellet quality may also be reduced following inclusion of corn DOGS, especially in corn diets. Samples from corn DOGS should be analyzed carefully for colour. A yellow colour is indicative of proper drying whereas a dark brown colour is indicative of excessive heat during drying and therefore reduced availability of enclosed nutrients for swine.