Alternative Feed Ingredients for Pigs

Largely due to the demand for grains for the bio-fuel industry, the cost of feed energy will increase worldwide. Therefore, alternative energy supplying pig feed ingredients should be explored, including distillers dried grains with solubles (DDGS), field peas, wheat shorts and liquid co-products from the bio-fuel and food industry. The inclusion of DDGS in diets is limited by the fiber concentration in DDGS and for finishing pigs, also by the concentration of unsaturated fatty acids. However, most groups of swine can be fed at least 20% DDGS and sometimes, greater concentrations can be used. The concentration of available energy in DDGS is similar to corn, but some sources of DDGS have low concentrations of digestible lysine. To avoid feeding these sources, it is recommended that only DDGS that has a lysine to crude protein ratio that is greater than 2.80% is used in diets fed to swine. Field peas also contain available energy in amounts that are similar to corn and the pea protein has a high concentration of lysine, but a low concentration of methionine, cysteine, threonine, and tryptophan. Crystalline sources of these amino acids are, therefore, often required, if field peas are included in the diets. Diets fed to weanling pigs and sows may contain at least 20% field peas without changing pig performance. If the peas are extruded or micronised prior to feeding, greater concentrations may be used. Diets fed to growing-finishing pigs, may contain up to 70% field peas and no soybean meal is needed in these diets. Wheat shorts have been available for use in swine diets for many years. The available energy content of wheat shorts is lower than that of corn, but it contains more digestible amino acids and phosphorus than corn. If diets are formulated carefully, growing-finishing pig diets may contain 40% wheat shorts without compromising pig performance. Liquid feeding allows the use of liquid co-products such as whey, whey permeate, corn distillers solubles, brewers yeast, sugar syrup, and corn steep water. The nutritional value of these co-products has been characterized and recommendations for their use in pig diets are made. These coproducts are generally more variable in nutritional value, which should be considered carefully when formulating and costing swine diets.