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Ration Formulation to Manage Nutrients

Now, if we can get back to our picture of the pig. At the beginning, we had inputs and we had outputs. Our outputs are gain, which is lean muscle. The lean put on was muscle. And we had fat. And our other outputs are our waste. And the ones we really have to worry about are the phosphorus and the nitrogen. We already talked about phytase. Do you guys probably have an...And we’ve talked about, Monday, about how we want to match our amino acids to the requirements so we do not have excess nitrogen. So you can get an idea of where I am going with this next bit. You can use ration formulation to actually minimize your waste.

Traditionally, the way rations were formulated in swine, you used kind of a safety margin type of a concept. We know what the requirements are, let’s put a little more in just to make sure we are good to go. It is kind of like the way you add your vitamin premix. However, since the industry is tended towards confinement rearing and large operations, there’s been huge problems with what are they going to do with the manure. How are we going to get rid of this phosphorus and nitrogen. Basically, what has happened is, in a lot of places where swine operations have become the most prevalent, the government has started enacting laws that put limits upon the amount of phosphorus and nitrogen that they can actually get rid of into the environment. The reason is, primarily, because of odors. Nitrogen, when it gets broken down in the manure that is really what causes the odor problems. If you can get a handle on your nitrogen, you can actually limit your odor problems. And then phosphorus. Your main worry is probably run-off into the water supply. The idea is we have went from being extra cautious, to now having pressure put upon the swine industry to optimize production while minimizing nutrients excreted. So likely what is going to happen is, in this compromise, our bottom dollar is going to be affected a little bit as we worry about the manure problems. So traditional approaches, well, take your manure, apply it on land, call it fertilizer and maybe if you are lucky you can even sell it to somebody. However, there is too darn much manure. You can only spread so much and you really can only take it so far because you are limited by the cost to transport. At some point, your waste problem is going to really cost you money to deal with.

There has been two approaches that have basically been adopted by the swine industry in the last ten years. They are pretty obvious. Just reduce the amount of nutrients you’re excreting. You will reduce the amount you have to pay money to deal with. Also, try and ensure the nutrients that are excreted can actually be recycled in some environmentally-friendly way. Make sure you are not going to cause damage to the air, ground or soil. I am basically going to talk about this because it is really the most obvious approach from a ration standpoint.

Decreasing nitrogen excretion in swine. We have already talked about the ideal protein concept. This is really the model that most swine nutritionists use to get a handle on nitrogen. The idea is we want to accurately determine requirements and then supply these requirements with only a minimal amount of excess. The way a nutritionist or a swine scientist can help this problem, basically develop more accurate requirement values. Remember, the NRC is based upon studies that are done in a university research setting. Some of the data that they rely upon, 20 years old. Genetics have changed dramatically in 20 in the swine industry. Basically, develop your requirement values and match them to your genetics. Also, know the digestibility of the amino acids in your ingredients. We know the nutrient content of feedstuffs. You guys have a library of feedstuffs in your spreadsheets. The content and the bioavailability are two different things. So a lot of swine nutritionists are actively studying just how digestible are the amino acids that we do find in our feedstuffs. Also, this is where I was talking about it is going to likely be a compromise. We are going to have to feed the most digestible ingredients in the most economically possible way. We are probably going to have to take a hit and feed more expensive rations just because it is going to minimize the problems we’re going to be facing. And hopefully in the long run, less laws will actually mean we are going to have to pay less money. So, if we are pro-active in this department we can probably go a long way to saving money.

Also, implementing phase feeding. We talked about phase feeding already. That is pretty standard practice. Feeding males and females separately. A male and female is going to have different requirements. They are going to perform differently. That is pretty obvious. The idea is we are going to increase our management and you are going to really have to know what you are doing if you are going to stay in business. I put this back up here because one of the criteria I just talked about in the last slide was understand the nutrient requirements of your animal.

The idea is if we can do research to better understand how a pig develops, we can more finely tune the requirements for each growth stage. And that is what you’re really doing with phase feeding, matching the diet to the phase of growth. I kind of put this slide up basically just to illustrate how phase feeding actually does work. The idea is we have the growing phase, a pig from really actually about 75 to 125 pounds, 18% crude protein, almost 1% lysine. Then, you move your pigs to a finishing phase ration. What you are going to do is from about 125 pounds to market, you are going to drop the protein down to 16% and 0.8% lysine. This is primarily in response to, if you remember the growth curve I just put up, finishing pigs tend to have the rate of muscle accretion going down as they reach market weight. So you want to feed less protein and amino acids. And then split sexes. The idea is a barrow, that is a castrated male, will eat and gain more than a female. So if you are actually going to feed your sexes individually, your male is going to get a different ration than you are going to feed your female. A gilt is basically a female that has not reached her first parity yet.

We have already talked about synthetic amino acids. There has actually been a lot of work in trying to see how we can feed synthetic amino acids. And we can influence the rate of nitrogen that we’re going to have go into manure. As it turns out, there has been some recent research that at any given growth stage, if you decrease the dietary protein by 2% and you supplement with crystalline lysine, you can dramatically decrease the nitrogen that is excreted in the manure. This is basically a summary. Several studies have been done now. You can get about 20 to 25% decrease in the nitrogen. What’s the disadvantages of feeding synthetic amino acids? Basically, the cost. They are not very cheap to put into a ration. We can reduce, just with lysine, you can reduce nitrogen excretion by 25%. You start throwing more synthetic amino acids in there, decreasing your crude protein down even further, you can see even more dramatic results. But, at some point it is just too darn costly to do. But, this is likely another area where you are going to have to make a compromise. You are going to end having to go towards using synthetic amino acids for supplementation just because it is going to be too expensive to be out of compliance with government regulations.

The other problem, big problem, is phosphorus. We have already talked about this. Most of the phosphorus in your cereal grains are unavailable. It is bound into phytate. Swine lack the enzyme, which is phytase, to breakdown the phytate. Basically, there is several strategies. One of them is, actually we have already talked about, supplementing with phytase. We already know that’s effective. Another is just to avoid excessive fortification. This is one of those cases where if one was good three must be better. We do not do that anymore. Very careful with how much phosphorus we put in the diet. Another is to just try and use feedstuffs that have a higher availability of phosphate in them or phosphorus. The problem with that is it may or may not be cost effective depending upon where your operation is located.

Finally, this is probably represents...The use of phytase and then this last one probably represents the greatest promise for the way the swine industry is going to go. The last one is using genetically-engineered corn that actually has low phytate in it. The phosphorus that is in the corn is more bioavailable and you have less to worry about to begin with. Right now, this is still a trade-off. It is kind of costly. You just do not have a lot of people growing it. But each year, it is catching on a little more in the swine industry. What is probably going to happen is more people are going to grow it, the more people who grow it, it is going to be less expensive and then it is going to actually be too cheap you cannot afford not to do it, given regulations.

This is out of your book too. It is basically just showing the effect that low phytate corn can have on phosphorus excretion. What we see on the left side is normal corn, normal soybean and the amount of phosphorus added into the diet compared to low phytate corn, low phytate soybean meal with no phosphorus put in the diet. If you just add, use the genetically modified feedstuffs and do not supplement with phosphorus, you can decrease your excretion by about 55%. This really affects the bottom line of a big producer like Smithfield. You can decrease the amount of waste you have to deal with by 50%. This is something that is really going to help you out. I would guess, probably in about five years, that is all that is going to be fed.

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