Pork producers should take a second look at lower-quality feed products, especially with the growing number of canola crushing and ethanol plants across western Canada, said a University of Alberta professor.
The use of co-products, or products are secondary products have become an important way to “suppress feed costs,” said Dr. Ruurd Zijlstra during the Animal Nutrition Conference of Canada in Edmonton.
“The underlying reason why producers need to consider this is to try to look at their feed costs. And as a consequence pigs may take slightly longer to reach market weight but if your feed costs per unit gain are a lot less you may still jump ahead when you look at income over feeds.”
“Any production system should aim for the highest value market which is the food market or the bioindustrial market and then maximize the opportunity to use feed-quality ingredients to formulate your feed. That way you always end up with lower-cost diets compared to feeding higher quality feed,” he said.
Zijlstra said the canola meal from extracting oil from canola or co-products left over from turning wheat into bread can be fed to animals and turned into high-quality animal products for people to eat.
“Feed quality wheat is still excellent quality for pigs to consume. Same for pulses and canola. There may be all kinds of reasons that food is being discounted into feed, but the pigs can convert these low-quality raw materials and convert into high-quality animal protein.”
“Crops of high quality should be sold into the food industry and then buy discounted wheat back and feed it to the animals on the farm.”
With feed about 70 percent of the cost of raising pigs, producers should take a close look at the feed options available, but it should always include the use of a livestock nutritionist, he said
“If you don’t manage that part right you will end up with a much lower income because your pigs will take longer to reach market weight or your carcass will not be in the proper part of the grid. You always need to work with a nutritionist to make sure these diets are balanced, particularly for energy and amino acids so you end up with a predictable growth performance in pigs.”
Balancing the fibre requirements of the co-product ingredients is also key when deciding to feed an alternative feed. Raw ingredient materials generally have higher fibre content. A higher fibre diet will likely mean slightly lower carcass weight and producers may need to sell the pigs slightly heavier to end up with the same carcass weight with your animals.
Zijlstra said there are some feed consultants and nutritionists that are more aggressive in including co-products in the diet. Around the world, corn and soybean are the energy source of choice for most hog producers, but farmers in western Canada have the unique ability to grow alternative crops that can compete with corn and soybean as top feed choices.
“We have a very unique climate here in western Canada that allows us to have a wider range of crop production and we should make use of that opportunity instead of importing corn and soybean from the states. We should make best use of our raw materials in order to raise pigs,” he said.
“With the expansion of the ethanol and canola crushing industry we will have way more opportunities to feed co-products than there were 20 years ago.” •
— By Mary MacArthur