April 5, 2016

US Grains Council: Alberta a growth market for US barley, DDGS

The US Grains Council (USGC) recently made a promotional tour of Alberta, Canada's largest beef-producing province, which it has identified as a potential growth market for sales of US barley and distiller's dried grains with solubles (DDGS).

During a conference it sponsored on the use of supplements in Canadian beef production, the USGC introduced a new tool for evaluating DDGS to some of the largest producers in Alberta.

The value calculator allows producers to enter the price of barley and other feed ingredients and calculate what they can afford to pay for DDGS with varying levels of fat for either growing or finishing diets.

"We wanted to move the needle to demonstrate you can pay more for DDGS than what the average opinion was in Alberta and have it pay off," said Neil Campbell, USGC representative in Canada.

"The calculator was the big news of the conference. We got a lot of people rethinking how they are going to value DDGS", he added.

The conference also presented a report on a couple of complementary DDGS feeding trials, which looked at the performance of low-oil and medium-oil DDGS in growing and finishing cattle as part of an ongoing effort to determine how DDGS should be valued in relation to barley, the dominant grain fed in Alberta's beef industry.

One of the trials, conducted in North Dakota in the US, found no differences in performance, while the other one inCanada showed a significant improvement in growth rates when DDGS levels increased in growing cattle rations and better feed efficiency in finishing cattle when the DDGS oil component increased.

The conference attracted more than 50 participants from the Alberta beef industry, including nutritionists, feedlot grain buyers, commercial feed industry buyers and re-sellers.

Alberta has around 150 feedlots and an annual output of 1.8 million head of cattle.

The total number of its beef cattle is 4.9 million, or 41% of the national herd.-Rick Alberto