Research has shown acidification of high moisture grains can improve preservation and boost the growth of weanling pigs.
As part of a Swine Innovation Porc research initiative to develop to feeding strategies to improve profitability, scientists evaluated the benefits including high moisture grains that had been treated with acids to improve preservation into the diets of weanling pig.
Dr. Denise Beaulieu, an Assistant Professor Monogastric Nutrition with the University of Saskatchewan, explains we know adding acids to the diets of weanling pigs prior to feeding improves growth so the intent of this study was to determine whether feeding these pretreated high moisture grains would result in the same benefits.
Dr. Denise Beaulieu-University of Saskatchewan:
In one set of experiments we used wheat based diets and the other one was barley based diets, so looking at the difference of acid preserved wheat or barley.
We compared different types of acid and we compared these to grain that was fed without acidification or diets that were fed and the acid was added directly at the time of feeding.
Actually we didn't see a lot of difference between the mode of acidification.
One of our answers was, yes that you can feed acid preserved grain and get comparable results to in feed acidification.
The two performed more or less equal.
We saw comparable results between the in feed acidification to when we fed the acid preserved grains.
What it does is it gives farmers one more option.
Let's say, If there is a year where we have really poor harvest conditions, a lot of the grain is being taken off wet.
Instead of having to pay to dry the grain, that can be very expensive, the high cost of energy, they could use acid preservation as one more option.
This is one more tool that they could have to use low quality grains to feed these pigs.
Source : Farmscape