Pig producers and feed manufacturers are being advised to make themselves aware of the source of their dried distillers grains with solubles, the manner in which the product was produced and its nutritional profile.
Dried distillers grains with solubles, a co-product of ethanol production, offer swine producers in certain areas an opportunity to significantly reduce feed costs.
Neil Campbell, a partner with Gowan’s Feed Consulting, notes DDGS contain fat, amino acids and a cost effective source of phosphorus but its important to know its nutritional profile and accommodate for variations that occur based on the ethanol plant’s processing methods and products marketed.
The variation that we see in distillers grains is really rooted at the difference in some of the technologies that exist between the plants.
There’s some different engineering between plants and there’s also some differences in the products that are produced and how they’re marketed.
One example, or one area where we have the greatest impact on the variation in distillers grains is the addition of centrifuge equipment that removes fat from the soluble stream in the production of distillers grains.
Many plants in the ethanol industry have put in a centrifuge to, what they call, spin the fat out of the soluble stream and they are then able to then market that corn oil into the feed industry or into the biodiesel industry and it’s very economical for them to do that.
The challenge that we see in the livestock feeding side is that the fat is then reduced in the distillers grains and we have to account for that when we’re building the loading values and formulating for those distillers grains.
Campbell says, if the fat is removed and we don’t adjust the ration, the energy in the ration will be lower and we’ll see an impact on performance but, if we know the product we’re getting and balance the ration accordingly, we won’t see any negative performance implication.
