Farmscape for November 30, 2017

The Saskatchewan Research Chair in Feed Processing Technology says a range of processing options are available to expand the use and profitability of crops.
The Canadian Feed Research Centre at North Battleford was created to explore methods of increasing the value of and expanding the markets for crops through processing.
Dr. Rex Newkirk, an associate professor with the University of Saskatchewan and Saskatchewan Research Chair in Feed Processing Technology responsible for the Canadian Feed Research Centre, says feed is a large part of our cost of production.

Clip-Dr. Rex Newkirk-University of Saskatchewan:
There's things we can do from a processing side that will increase our profitability and some of them are very well known.
For example grinding.
We know that in pigs we want to have a relatively small particle size in order to increase efficiency.
We also know that if we pellet the material that we can change the material, make it more digestible, we can increase the amount they eat, reduce sorting.
Those are some examples of things you can do from processing so we look at your standard processing methods but also involved in the feed manufacturing side is sourcing the ingredients.
Make sure you're formulating to meet the animals' needs and so part of our research is looking at how do we reduce those safety margins but still accurately make diets in order to make our diets more cost effective as well as more consistent and try to eliminate or reduce any errors that can occur that doesn't meet the requirements.
On top of that we have other things we can do where we can increase digestibility through specialized processing.
For example if you think about straw, straw really has a very low digestibility.
It's very difficult to handle, it's very light and very fluffy but we can, through certain methods in our process, compaction, through briquette making or through steam explosion we can make these ingredients more digestible to the animal, more fermentable so we have a wide range of abilities to add value to the crop.

Dr. Newkirk says it's really about looking at options and finding which ones will make the most profit.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

       *Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork