Stein, Hans H., Olayiwola Adeola, Sung Woo Kim, Phillip S. Miller, Sunday A. Adedokun, and North Central Coordinating Committee on Swine Nutrition (NCCC-42).  2023. Digestibility of energy and concentrations of metabolizable energy and net energy varies among sources of bakery meal when fed to growing pigs. Journal of Animal Science, 101, 1–9. doi.org/10.1093/jas/skad297.

Lagos, L. V., D. A. Lopez, and H. H. Stein. 2019. Nutrient composition and energy concentration in soybean meal from 5 different countries fed to pigs. In: 6th EAAP International Symposium on Energy and Protein Metabolism and Nutrition, Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil, Sep. 9-12, 2019. Pages 159-160. (Abstr.). Link to full text

Extrusion of cereal grains may be used to improve nutrient digestibility in cereal grains because addition of heat and pressure in combination with addition of moisture during the extrusion may gelatinize the starch, which results in an increase in starch digestibility. It is also possible that AA and energy digestibility are increased by the extrusion, but data to verify this hypothesis have not been published. Therefore, the objective of these experiments was to test the hypothesis that the ileal digestibility of AA and starch and the apparent total tract digestibility (ATTD) of ADF, NDF, and GE as well as the concentrations of DE and ME in corn, wheat, and sorghum are increased by extrusion.

Espinosa, C. D. and H. H. Stein. 2018. High-protein distillers dried grains with solubles produced using a novel front-end-back-end fractionation technology has greater nutritional value than conventional distillers dried grains with solubles when fed to growing pigs. J. Anim. Sci. 96(Suppl. 2):174 (Abstr.) Link to abstract (.pdf)

Lee, S. A., C. D. Espinosa, and H. H. Stein. 2018. Digestibility of amino acids, energy, fat, and fiber and digestible and metabolizable energy in low-oil distillers dried grains with solubles fed to growing pigs. J. Anim. Sci. 96(Suppl. 2):172-173 (Abstr.) Link to abstract (.pdf)

Casas, G. A. and H. H. Stein. 2018. Young Scholar Presentation: Nutritional value of rice coproducts fed to pigs. J. Anim. Sci. 96(Suppl. 2):143 (Abstr.) Link to abstract (.pdf)

Casas, G. A., D. A. Rodriguez, and H. H. Stein. 2018. Nutrient composition and digestibility of energy and nutrients in wheat middlings and red dog fed to growing pigs. J. Anim. Sci. 96:215-224. Link to full text

Fiber in feed ingredients used in diets for pigs is mainly used for energy, which is synthesized by microbes in the hindgut of the pig and absorbed in the form of short chained fatty acids. To estimate the energy that a pig can obtain in a particular fibrous ingredient, a digestibility experiment is usually conducted and the digestible energy (DE) and the metabolizable energy (ME) in the ingredient is determined. However, it is not known if the obtained DE and ME values are accurate for all inclusion rates of the feed ingredient in diets.

There are two reasons that differing inclusion rates of high fiber ingredients in diets fed to pigs might result in variable DE and ME values. Because energy from dietary fiber is obtained via hindgut fermentation, there may be a saturation point in the fermentation capacity in the hindgut of growing pigs. In addition, increasing dietary fiber increases the passage rate of feed through the digestive tract and thus reduces time for fermentation. However, it is not known if these potential issues affect the DE and ME in fibrous ingredients fed to pigs. An experiment was conducted to determine effects of inclusion rate of four commonly used high fiber dietary ingredients on the concentration of DE and ME by growing pigs.

In recent years, ethanol plants have begun extracting more oil from the solubles left over after fermentation. The resulting low oil distillers dried grains with solubles (DDGS) contain less digestible energy (DE) and metabolizable energy (ME) than traditional DDGS.

The fat content of the diet affects the digestibility of energy and nutrients. Because the production of low oil DDGS is a relatively new development, it has not been established that digestibility values are the same across suppliers. Therefore, an experiment was conducted to measure the apparent total tract digestibility (ATTD) of neutral detergent fiber (NDF) and the concentration of DE and ME among DDGS samples from different suppliers.