Farmscape for April 25, 2017
Research conducted by the University of Manitoba suggests pork producers can reduce feed costs by including canola meal at higher levels in the diets of lactating sows.
Scientists with the University of Manitoba, as part of a large scale project to evaluate the inclusion of canola meal in swine rations, compared three lactating sow diets, a control diet, a diet containing 15 percent canola meal and a diet containing 30 percent canola meal, to determine whether canola meal could be included at higher levels.
Dr. Martin Nyachoti, a Professor with the University of Manitoba and Head of the Department of Animal Science, says key parameters such as body weight changes, back fat changes, milk composition, feed intake, weaning to estrus intervals as well as numbers of piglets born alive, numbers weaned, and litter weights were similar in all three treatments.
Clip-Dr. Martin Nyachoti-University of Manitoba:
I think the significance is that canola meal, which is obviously a very important feed ingredient here in western Canada and in fact globally is the second most used protein supplement, is that we can now use this ingredient that is produced here in place of some of the imported protein supplements that we use.
In that sense I think it makes a lot of sense that potentially it can allow us to mitigate feed costs by using locally produced feed ingredients.
I think the take home message is that we need to reexamine, we should not discount co-products such as canola meal on the basis of some of the traditional knowledge that we have had.
The science of nutrition has advanced greatly that allows us to formulate diets properly that we can effectively utilize ingredients such as canola meal in large amounts in lactating sow diets.
Dr. Nyachoti notes this is ongoing work and scientist hope to conduct more detailed studies to get a better definition of how this ingredient can be used in sow nutrition.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.
*Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork
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