A senior marketing associate with Elanco Animal Health says, as the number of farms producing pigs has fallen and the size of those farms has increased, consumer interest and awareness of the environmental implications of pork production has increased.
“Swine Nutrition Strategies to Minimize Environmental Impact” was among the topics discussed last week in Winnipeg as part of Manitoba Swine Seminar 2013.
Matt Kocher, a senior marketing associate swine with Elanco Animal Health, says whether your here in Manitoba, the United States or even globally from the consumer’s perspective, they’re concerned with odor and water quality, especially related to nitrogen and phosphorus.
Phosphorus serves a variety of functions physiologically to the pig from nerve and cell function but, as most of us are aware, from bone development.
The requirements fortunately have been well studied through numerous research trials conducted at universities here in Canada as well as the United States to quantify what is that requirement need for that pig so producers do have a variety of tools that they can use to manage the phosphorus.
One can apply various feeding strategies in terms of phase feeding, they can apply pelleting, they can use reduced micron size to improve feed conversion obviously, simply put, lowering the amount of feed required to grow that animal.
But probably one of the most widely used tools is they use of phytase, the enzyme, to unlock or make the phytate phosphorus more available to the animal.
Kocher suggests any opportunities we can use to more precisely feed the pig and do it economically will offer advantages.
He says balancing the nutrition of the pig with the needs of the environment will be critical to ensure sustainability.
