Effects of Combinations of Wheat, Corn or Hulless Barley with Hulled Barley Supplemented with Soybean Meal or Canola Meal on Growth Rate, Efficiency of Feed Utilization and Carcass Quality of Market Pigs

Barley is the grain base for pig production in Western Canada. Its successful use depends upon appropriate supplementation. Good barley contains only 90% of recommended digestible energy (DE) for growingfinishing pigs. Barley is highly variable in DE, protein and amino acid content, being affected by varietal, agronomic and climatic factors. High fibre content is associated with reduced DE content (Perez et al., 1980; Just, 1982). Bell et al. (1983) reported that energy digestibility declined from 84 to 64% as the crude fibre content increased from 2.5 to 11.0%, equivalent to a hull increase from zero to 30%.