Article published the September 11, 2020
Introduction
The U.S. swine industry is facing a significant change in production practices regarding gestation sow housing. Many pork producers across the United States are shifting from housing gestating sows in individual stalls to a group housing system. This is driven by animal welfare concerns, state legislatures, and food companies’ demands.
Electronic sow feeding (ESF) is one optio ...
Article published the September 11, 2020
Introduction
Soybean meal is one of the most readily available and economical protein sources commonly fed to pigs. Due to a number of anti-nutritional factors, its inclusion in newly weaned pig diets has been limited. Thus, specialty animal proteins, such as animal plasma, blood cells, or fish meal have been commonly added as highly digestible amino acid sources in starter diets. In recent years ...
Article published the September 9, 2020
Introduction
Oligosaccharides are a group of carbohydrate polymers containing 3 to 10 simple sugars that can be fed to pigs as prebiotics. Mannan- (Davis et al., 2002;3 Rozeboom et al., 20054 ), chito- (Liu et al., 20085 ), and fructo-oligosaccharides (Gebbink et al., 19996 ), have been shown to improve growth performance in young pigs. Possible mechanisms by which oligosaccharides benefit growth ...
Article published the August 26, 2020
Introduction
Lysine is the first limiting amino acid in corn-soybean meal-based swine diets. In order to maximize efficiency in all stages of production, the requirement of Lys needs to be determined. In lactation diets, nutrients need to be supplied to support both sow maintenance and litter growth. Inadequate nutrient intake during lactation can cause the sow to be catabolic and cause increased ...
Article published the August 5, 2020
Introduction
The optimal concentration of nutrients required by growing pigs generally decreases over the growing-finishing period with a phase feeding program used as an attempt to meet the needs of the pigs over the changing requirements. Thus, in commercial production, phase feeding is thought to improve economics and reduce nitrogen excretion by more closely meeting the pig’s nutrient r ...
Article published the June 10, 2020
Introduction
Sodium and chloride are involved in several of the body’s processes, such as the sodium potassium pump and osmotic regulation. Traditionally, the most common source of Na and Cl in swine diets is added salt. Hagsten et al. noted improvements in ADG and F/G when at least 0.10% of salt was added to corn-soybean meal diets for pigs from 40 to 200 lb. However, Alcantara et al. repo ...
Article published the June 9, 2020
Introduction
The implementation and monitoring of quality control, quality assurance systems, and their standard operating procedures in feed mill operations are integral in assessing the overall success and profitability of livestock operations. The proper sampling of finished feed and its subsequent analysis is a common standard operating procedure that is used for most swine nutrition studies ...
Article published the June 2, 2020
Introduction
Pelleting is a feed processing method shown to improve handling and transportation characteristics of feeds, while reducing ingredient segregation during handling, decreasing dust levels, and improving feed utilization in swine. The use of flat die technology (cold pelleting) has received little attention at this point compared to thermal pelleting for commercial feed applications. I ...
Participation in Forum on May 20, 2020
First on the trace minerals: commercial diets contain margins of safety for trace minerals and vitamins. The extra trace minerals had increased over time. Data started being published suggesting that the excess trace minerals may be negative for productivity along with being a potential environmental concern. Thus, the levels have been reducing to be closer to requirements. You are correct that or ...
Article published the March 9, 2020
Introduction
Mycotoxins are naturally-produced hazards that result from molds that can grow on cereal grains and other commodities, such as peanuts, cottonseed, and soybeans. The primary species causing mycotoxins are aspergillus (aflatoxin and ochratoxin) and fusarium (fumonisins and zearalenone) molds. Very small quantities of mycotoxins may cause illness in swine or impact production efficienc ...