Achievements

Congratulations to Diego Navarro, who was presented with the Wilson G. Pond Travel Award at the ASAS-CSAS Annual Meeting & Trade Show in Baltimore. Diego will use the award to travel to Tallin, Estonia, in August and participate in the annual meeting for the European Association of Animal Production.

Personnel changes

After spending a four-month sabbatical in our lab, Dr. Akemi Yamamoto returned to Japan, where she was recently promoted to full professor at Gifu University. We wish her all the best in her new position.

Two new visiting scholars joined us in July. Von Mesina is a Master's student at the University of the Philippines in Los Baños, and he will be with us for a year to conduct the research for his thesis. Monica Arredondo Nontien is from the National University of Colombia, Bogotá, and she will be with us for a six-month internship before returning to Bogotá to complete her bachelor's degree. Welcome, Von and Monica!

New experiments

Diego Rodriguez started two experiments: one about the effects of extrusion of yellow dent corn, wheat, and sorghum on energy and fiber digestibility in weanling pigs, and the other about amino acid digestibility of the same ingredients.

Su A also started two experiments. The first was on the effects of different levels of soybean meal on digestibility of amino acids in growing pigs fed diets below and above the amino acids requirement. The second was to determine the STTD of calcium in monocalcium phosphate and dicalcium phosphate from different suppliers for growing pigs.

Molly McGhee, who is filling in for Kate during her maternity leave, reports on the following projects on which Dr. Stein is PI:

• The effect of origin of soybean meal on ileal digestibility of amino acids by growing pigs.
• Effects of two direct fed microbials on ileal digestibility of amino acids and total tract digestibility of CP and GE in diets fed to growing pigs.
• Miya-Gold Miyairi 588 robiotic dose titration on swine performance and gut microflora composition.
• The effects of an enzyme and DFM combination on the growth performance and carcass characteristics of growing/finishing pigs fed four diets differing in nutrient density.
• Digestibility of phosphorus in two new sources of soybean meal and in conventional soybean meal fed to weanling pigs.
• Amino acid digestibility in two new sources of soybean meal and in conventional soybean meal fed to weanling pigs.
• Digestibility of energy and concentrations of digestible and metabolizable energy in two new sources of soybean meal and in conventional soybean meal fed to weanling pigs. (The last three all tested the same sources of soybean meal.)

Molly also started an experiment on the effects of extrusion of high-fiber diets on ileal digestibility of amino acids that is a collaboration between Dr. Stein and Dr. de Godoy. Finally, she started a study of her own on AID and SID of amino acids, starch, and pentosans in barley, wheat, corn, and three rye hybrids fed to growing pigs.

Travel and visitors

On June 8, most members of the lab attended the 2017 World Pork Expo in Des Moines, IA. The next day, they met with Dr. Patience's lab at Iowa State University.

Gloria, Jeru, Charmaine, Woongbi, and Vanessa took part in a course on "Carbohydrates with emphasis on nutrition and intestinal health of non-ruminant animals" at Aarhus University. Dr. Stein was a co-instructor for the course, which ran from June 26 to July 7. Before and during the course, they took side trips to AgriFirm, Wageningen University, Chr. Hansen, Novozyme, the Danish Pork Producers research division, the University of Copenhagen, Hamlet Protein Global Headquarters, DuPont Bioscience, and a Danish swine farm.

Diego Navarro visited Stein Lab alum Pilar Guzmán in Spain, and joined his fellow lab members in Europe before they started the carbohydrates course. Then, he went to Kansas State for the IGP Feed Manufacturing Short Course from June 27-30.

On July 8-12, Su A and Diego Navarro attended the 2017 ASAS-CSAS Annual Meeting & Trade Show in Baltimore. Su A presented a poster, and Diego recieved the Wilson Pond Travel Award.

We had visitors from the Novus Internship program on July 26. The interns were seven graduate students from China and three from Nigeria. They told us about their reseach projects and what their career goals are. We also learned about where they came from, and got to give them a tour of our beautiful campus.

Publications

Navarro, D. M. D. L., Y. Liu, T. S. Bruun, and H. H. Stein. 2017. Amino acid digestibility by weanling pigs of processed ingredients originating from soybeans, 00-rapeseeds, or a fermented mixture of plant ingredients. J. Anim. Sci. 95:2658-2669.

Casas, G. A. and H. H. Stein. 2017. The ileal digestibility of most amino acids is greater in red dog than in wheat middlings when fed to growing pigs. J. Anim. Sci. 95:2718-2725.

Rojas, O. J. and H. H. Stein. 2017. Processing of ingredients and diets and effects on nutritional value for pigs. J. Anim. Sci. Biotechnol. 8:48.

Huang, C. F., H. H. Stein, L. Y. Zhang, D. Li, and C. H. Lai. 2017. Concentrations of minerals in pig feed ingredients commonly used in China. Transl. Anim. Sci. 1:126-136.

Long, C. J., L. B. Kondratovich, M. F. Westphalen, H. H. Stein, and T. L. Felix. 2017. Effects of exogenous phytase supplementation on phosphorus metabolism and digestibility of beef cattle. Transl. Anim. Sci. 1:168-178.

Casas, G. A. and H. H. Stein. 2017. Gestating sows have greater digestibility of energy in full fat rice bran and defatted rice bran than growing gilts regardless of level of feed intake. J. Anim. Sci. 95:3136-3142.