Feeding pigs


Monday, 18 July, 2016

Co-products from the ethanol and human food industries are helping shed light on ways processing high-fibre animal feed ingredients can enhance pigs’ utilisation of the nutrients and energy they contain. The co-products from these industries typically contain more fibre than the standard corn-soybean meal diet.

“It is possible that the benefits of extrusion and pelleting are greater in high-fibre diets than in low-fibre diets. We set out to test that hypothesis,” said Hans H Stein, professor of animal sciences at the University of Illinois.

Stein and his team tested effects of extrusion, pelleting, or extrusion and pelleting using: a low-fibre diet based on corn and soybean meal; a medium-fibre diet containing corn, soybean meal and 25% distillers dried grains with solubles (DDGS); and a high-fibre diet containing corn, soybean meal, 25% DDGS and 20% soybean hulls.

Each diet was divided into four batches. One batch was fed in meal form, one was pelleted at 85°C, one was extruded at 115°C and the fourth was extruded at 115°C and then pelleted at 85°C.

“Regardless of the concentration of fibre in the diet, pelleting, extrusion and pelleting plus extrusion increased the digestibility of indispensable amino acids relative to feeding in meal form,” Stein said. “For most indispensable amino acids, extrusion or extrusion combined with pelleting provided a greater increase than pelleting alone. There was no interaction between processing techniques and fibre level.”

Pelleting of low-fibre diets increased digestible energy by 1.9% and metabolisable energy by 2.1%. Extrusion did not increase digestible energy or metabolisable energy of the low-fibre diet. Combining extrusion with pelleting did not increase digestible energy or metabolisable energy compared with pelleting alone.

For the medium-fibre diets, pelleting increased digestible energy by 1.9% and metabolisable by 2.2%. Extrusion increased digestible by 2.3% and metabolisable energy by 2.7%. The combination of pelleting and extrusion did not increase digestible energy or metabolisable energy in these diets.

Pelleting did not increase digestible energy or metabolisable of the high-fibre diets. Extrusion increased digestible energy by 2.0% and metabolisable by 2.9%. The combination of extrusion and pelleting increased digestible energy by 2.9% and metabolisable energy by 3.7%.

Hindgut fermentation was not increased in pigs fed extruded, pelleted or extruded and pelleted diets. Instead, the increase in digestible energy and metabolisable energy appeared to be attributable to increased digestibility of amino acids and starch.

Stein concludes, “These data indicate that energy utilisation may be improved by pelleting or extrusion or by a combination of the two, but the response seems to be greater for extrusion in diets that are relatively high in fibre.”

The research is supported by funding from the National Pork Board and by Bühler AG.

The full text is available online: www.animalsciencepublications.org/publications/jas/articles/94/5/1951.

Originally published here.

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