Jaworski, N. W., H. N. Lærke, K. E. Bach Knudsen, and H. H. Stein. 2015. Carbohydrate composition and in vitro digestibility of dry matter and nonstarch polysaccharides in corn, sorghum, and wheat and coproducts from these grains. J. Anim. Sci. 93:1103-1113. Link to full text (.pdf)

Rojas, O. J., Y. Liu, and H. H. Stein. 2013. Phosphorus digestibility and concentration of digestible and metabolizable energy in corn, corn coproducts, and bakery meal fed to growing pigs. J. Anim. Sci. 91:5326-5335. Link to full text (.pdf)

With the prices of cereal grains rising, opportunities to reduce feed costs by using alternative ingredients are being explored. One source of alternative feed ingredients is co-products from the use of corn in the production of food for humans. Only limited published information is available on the digestibility of phosphorus in corn co-products derived from the human food industry.

Phosphorus from plant sources is often bound to phytate, which decreases the availability of the phosphorus to the pigs because pigs do not produce the enzyme phytase. The addition of microbial phytase to diets containing corn and soybean meal increases phosphorus digestibility in these ingredients. However, no data have been published on the effect of adding phytase to diets containing hominy feed,  bakery meal, corn gluten meal, corn gluten feed, or corn germ meal.

Therefore, an experiment was performed to determine the apparent (ATTD) and standardized (STTD) total tract digestibility of phosphorus in hominy feed, bakery meal, corn gluten meal, corn gluten feed, and corn germ meal, and to compare these values to the values obtained for corn and DDGS. The effect of the addition of microbial phytase to the diets on the digestibility of phosphorus in the experimental ingredients was also measured.

Almeida, F. N., G. I. Petersen, and H. H. Stein. 2011. Digestibility of amino acids in corn, corn coproducts, and bakery meal fed to growing pigs. J. Anim. Sci. 89:4109-4115. Link to full text (.pdf)

By Dr. Hans H. Stein

February, 2011

Distillers dried grains with solubles (DDGS) is the most common co-product generated from the ethanol industry and the production in the US of DDGS is now greater than the production of soybean meal. While DDGS is an excellent feed ingredient that in most cases can be included in diets fed to all groups of pigs at levels of at least 20 to 30%, there are also other corn co-products that may be used in diets fed to pigs.