Swine nutritionists from across Canada are working to reduce feed costs, improve feed efficiency and reduce wasted nutrients in ways that will benefit the environment.
Swine nutritionists from across Canada working on behalf of Swine Innovation Porc are examining the nutritive value of a wide range of feed ingredients.
Dr. Martin Nyachoti, the Head of the Department of Animal Science with the University of Manitoba, says the goal is to generate information to be used by swine nutritionists and the feed industry to formulate more effective swine diets.
We hope to impact the cost of production because we believe that by characterizing a wide range of feed ingredients in terms of their nutritive value, we can then formulate diets that are more cost effective. We also know that by looking at some of the technologies that could be added into the diets such as feed enzymes we can improve nutrient utilization so we can also minimize the nutrients that are wasted and hopefully improve cost.
Cost reduction is one of our main objectives here and we hope we can achieve that. The other one is that we hope to improve the efficiency of production by utilizing the right assessment of the feed ingredient and then using those coefficients to formulate diets that are balanced more with the nutrient requirements for the pigs and therefore be able to produce pigs a bit more efficiently and also by utilizing ingredients that are locally sourced rather than by importing ingredients to a production area. We hope to impact both efficiency of production as well as cost of production then that will also have a positive impact on the environment.
~ Dr. Martin Nyachoti, University of Manitoba
Dr. Nyachoti notes this is a five year project and the work will continue until the end of 2022.
