Achievements

Members of our lab received three awards at the ASAS annual meeting in Vancouver. Gloria received the Agri King Outstanding Graduate Student Award, Su A received the Wilson G. Pond Travel Award, and Dr. Stein received the Gary Cromwell Award in Mineral Nutrition. Gloria was unable to travel to Vancouver, but Su A and Dr. Stein were able to receive their awards in person (below).

Personnel changes

We said farewell to Von and Johana this month. Von Mesina has been a visiting scholar in our lab for the last 12 months. During his time in our lab he has completed two experiments and written his Master's thesis. He will now go back to UPLB in the Philippines and complete the remaining requirements for his MS degree.

Our intern Johana Gonzalez finished her time with us as well. She will now go back to Bogota, Colombia, to complete her BS degree. We will miss Johana’s smile and her always positive attitude.

We wish them both the best of luck in their future endeavors, and hope their time here was a helpful experience for them.

New experiments

Diego Rodriguez started two experiments this month. The first was on digestibility of amino acids, fiber, and energy and concentrations of digestible and metabolizable energy in conventional and extruded yellow dent corn, wheat, and sorghum fed to growing pigs. The second is looking at the effects of extrusion on digestibility of amino acids in soybean hulls fed to growing pigs.

Travel and visitors

Dr. Stein did a lot of traveling this month!

• On July 2, he was in Oftringen, Switzerland, where he visited Omya, a company that produces calcium carbonate. He gave a presentation on "Ca and P in diets for pigs."
• On July 3, he was in Kaiseraugst, Switzerland, where he visited DSM (one of the world's largest premix companies). He discussed collaborative research with them and gave a presentation entitled "Protein, fat and fiber in diets for pigs."
• On July 9 and 10, he participated in the National Animal Science Meeting in Vancouver, Canada.
• On July  17 to 19, he was in Cali, Colombia, where he participated in "Pork Americas" and gave two presentations entitled "Digestibility of nutrients by pigs" and "Digestibility of Ca and P by pigs."
• On July 21, he participated in the AMVEC conference in Merida, Mexico, where he gave a presentation entitled "Digestibility of nutrients by pigs."
• Finally, on July 26, he participated in the National Pork Board's Animal Science Meeting in Chicago, giving a presentation entitled "The Monogastric Nutrition Laboratory at the University of Illinois."

Publications

Lee, S. A., G. A. Casas, and H. H. Stein. 2018. The level of feed intake does not influence digestibility of calcium and phosphorus in diets fed to gestating sows, but gestating sows have reduced digestibility of calcium and phosphorus compared with growing gilts. Can. J. Anim. Sci. 98:591-594.

Liu, Y., C. D. Espinosa, J.  J. Abelilla, G. A. Casas, L. V. Lagos, S. A. Lee, W. B. Kwon, J. K. Mathai, D. M. D. L. Navarro, N. W. Jaworski, and H. H. Stein. 2018. Non-antibiotic feed additives in diets for pigs: A review. Anim. Nutr. 4:113-125.

Huang, C., P. Li, X. Ma, N. W. Jaworski, H. H. Stein, C. Lai, J. Zhao, and S. Zhang. 2018. Methodology effects on determining the energy concentration and the apparent total tract digestibility of components in diets fed to growing pigs. Asian-Austr. J. Anim. Sci. 31:1315-1324.

She, Y., Q. Wang, H. H. Stein, L. Liu, D. Li, and S. Zhang. 2018. Additivity of values for phosphorus digestibility in corn, soybean meal, and canola meal in diets fed to growing pigs. Asian-Austr. J. Anim. Sci. 31:1301-1307.