January 18, 2010

US institutions to launch new swine nutrition guide

A new swine nutrition guide will be launched in February, designed to help producers customise the most effective swine diets suited to their needs.

Swine nutritionists and specialists from nine universities, the US Pork Centre of Excellence (USPCE) and the USDA's Cooperative State Research, Education and Extension Service (CSREES) collaborated on the project.

With the feed cost pressures facing pork producers in recent years, the use of a wider range of feed ingredients has necessitated the customisation of swine diets, while ensuring the pigs' dietary requirements are met.

With that as a base to work from, a new Swine Nutrition Guide has been designed to enable pork producers and consultants to develop feeding programmes using a feed ingredient library of over 200 ingredients to serve as a baseline for building diets, plus the capability of adding novel ingredients.

The new swine modelling programme was developed utilising information from the National Research Council (NRC) 1998 Nutrient Requirements of Swine guide and other sources of university and industry trial data.

Regional Extension swine specialist Mark Whitney said, "The swine modelling programme allows the user to enter on-farm production data, including energy intake or concentration, lean growth rate, pig or sow weight, expected gestational weight gain, lactation length, litter size/litter growth rate, etc., to calculate recommended nutrient levels."

"These nutrient recommendations, calculated by the growth/production model, are then listed as suggested nutrient levels in the formulation portion of the programme. Producers can use the suggested nutrient recommendations or replace them with their own nutrient levels and formulate diets based on the constraint nutrients they choose, on a least-cost basis," said Whitney.