The results of new research at the University of Illinois in the United States indicate that producers can reduce feed costs if yellow corn, a staple of the pig diet in the United States, is ground to a smaller, finer size. The smaller particle size allows pigs to get more energy from the corn, which means producers can reduce the amount of fat added to their diets.
Hans H. Stein, professor of animal sciences at the University, and his laboratory conducted an experiment to determine whether growth performance and carcass characteristics differed between pigs fed diets with the same amount of energy but containing corn ground in different quantities. levels. Current industry recommendations require that corn fed to pigs be ground to a particle size of about 650 microns.
“When corn is ground to smaller particles, pigs can obtain more energy because the increased surface area means digestive enzymes have more access to the nutrients in the corn, resulting in greater digestibility of the starch,” Stein said. “Therefore, you can reduce the amount of fat added to diets without loss of metabolizable energy if you use finer ground corn. In this study, we tested the hypothesis that added fat can be removed from diets containing finely ground corn without affecting the growth performance and housing characteristics of pigs.”
The researchers fed growing and finishing pigs diets containing corn ground to 865, 677, 485 and 339 microns. The diets were formulated to contain the same amount of metabolizable energy while varying the amount of added fat.
Source: agrolink
