The Prairie Swine Centre and Gowans Feed Consulting have teamed up to create a new first of its kind student award in nutrition.
In an effort to address the expanding need for qualified swine nutritionists the Prairie Swine Centre and Gowans Feed Consulting have created the Gowans Feed Consulting Student in Nutrition Award.
The award, which is available at the PhD or Masters level, targets graduate students who have some industry experience and wish to increase their skills and future earning potential through advanced nutrition training and offers up to 20 thousand dollars per year of study in addition to the normal Graduate Research Assistantship stipend.
Prairie Swine Centre president and CEO Lee Whittington notes there’s a huge need for trained nutritionists in the pork industry in Canada.
Nutrition has always been probably the most important factor in the success of a pork production operation, mostly because it’s at least 65 percent of the cost of production.
With the wild variations that we’ve had in commodity prices over the last three to five years the focus is on coming up with alternative ingredients and taking a look at each stage of production and whether or not we can change our rations to meet the animals’ requirements.
It’s a constantly moving benchmark, nutrition is, because the genetics of our pigs, the way we manage them, the housing that we provide for them has meant that more and more of their genetic potential can be expressed in the modern pig as compared to 20 or 25 years ago and so nutrition has to keep running to keep up with the improvement in the genetics of the pig.
It’s a never ending cycle and so, as a result, the nutrition tends to be the place that producers can act to get the biggest bang for their buck but also it’s the place where you can act in a business to make the greatest change in the shortest amount of time.
For more information on or to apply for the Gowans Feed Consulting Student in Nutrition Award visit the Prairie Swine Centre’s web site at prairieswine.com.
Source: Farmscape.Ca
