A researcher with the University of Manitoba is encouraging swine producers to consider adopting the net energy system for formulating swine rations.
Net energy refers to the energy in a feed ingredient available to the pig after normal metabolic losses.
Researchers with the University of Manitoba have launched a three year project under which the net energy contents of various feed ingredients available in western Canada are being measured.
Animal scieince professor Dr. Martin Nyachoti says the net energy system gives us the best reflection of the amount of energy in a feed that’s useful to the animal.
There are a number of advantages of adopting the net energy system.
These include things such as the fact that if you’re formulating your diets based on the net energy system you are likely to closely meet the energy requirements of the animal so you will have a much more uniform growth within your animal groups and you will probably impact as well the carcass quality from those animals.
There will be also advantages in the sense that we’ll be able to utilize alternative feed ingredients more effectively because we’ll have a better reflection of the energy content in the feed.
Also with the net energy system we can reduce the amount of protein that we put into the diet because the system allows us to select different feed ingredients which allows an added advantage of minimizing nitrogen excretion, the manure volume because the lower the protein the less water the animals will be drinking and therefore less really to deal with.
There’s a number of advantages that one can expect by adopting the net energy system.
Dr. Nyachoti expects the information gathered through this project to be useful to those who formulate swine rations, including nutritionists working for different companies, private consultants or producers who formulate their own diets.
Source: Farmscape.Ca
