Farmscape for April 26, 2017

A researcher with the Prairie Swine Centre says the use of enzymes or various processing methods can allow pork producers to capture the benefits of increasing levels of fibre in swine diets while mitigating the negative effects.
The Utilization of Fibre Rich Diets was discussed yesterday as part of the Prairie Swine Centre's 2017 Manitoba Spring Producer Meeting.
Dr. Atta Agyekum, a Post Doctoral Fellow with the Prairie Swine Centre observes, factors driving the increased interest in feeding fibre rich diets include the prebiotic effects of fibre in boosting gut heath and the effect of fibre in increasing satiety among gestating sows but a concern in the grower finisher barn is that high fibre diets tend slow growth.

Clip-Dr. Atta Agyekum-Prairie Swine Centre:
When you feed high fibre diets to pigs it actually fills up the stomach faster.
For the gestating sows it's a good thing because we don't want them to feel hungry all the time and show any aggression.
For the growing pig this is not a good thing because it means you want to be able to eat enough feed to grow faster so one of the most used strategies out there is adding feed enzymes that can break down this fibre.
The typical enzymes will be Xylanase and Beta-Glucanase.
The fibre components in these diets are rich in some of the substrates that Xylanase or Beta-Glucanase can break down and try to reduce the negative effects of fibre.
Another approach is using physical methods.
This will be using extrusion or pressure cooking the straw which will be the physical treatment.
You can use pressure cooking or steam extrusion to try to break down the fibre fraction and improve the utilization of this fibre when added to pig diets.

Dr. Agyekum says we should not be looking at fibre just from a negative point of view.
He says it can be used to achieve beneficial effects, especially now that we are trying to phase out the use of in-feed antibiotics.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

       *Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork