Copra and palm kernel co-products are commonly fed to ruminant animals in some parts of the world. However, very limited research has been reported on the use of these ingredients in swine diets. No values are listed in the NRC (1998) for copra expellers, palm kernel expellers, or palm kernel meal.

Rising costs of traditional swine feeds are causing many producers to look for alternative feedstuffs to deliver nutritional value at a lower cost. The corn milling and fermentation industries, and the human food industry, create co-products which can be fed to livestock.  One of these, distillers dried grains with solubles (DDGS), has been found to be suitable for inclusion in swine diets up to 30%. Other co-products have not been as extensively studied. This experiment was performed to measure the apparent (AID) and standardized (SID) ileal digestibility of crude protein and amino acids in corn gluten meal, corn gluten feed, corn germ meal, hominy feed, and bakery meal in growing pigs and to compare these values to the values observed for DDGS and corn.

To determine true digestibility of nutrients, endogenous losses from the digestive tract must be measured. Because consistent values for endogenous losses of fat (ELF) in pigs have yet to be determined, the calculation of fat digestibility has mostly been limited to apparent digestibility.

Endogenous losses of fat may be influenced by the form of fat – extracted or intact – and by the concentration of fiber in the diet. The objective of this experiment was to determine the effect of the form of dietary fat on ileal and total tract digestibility of fat in growing pigs. To do so, it was necessary to measure endogenous losses of fat and to correct for the difference in amounts of dietary fiber in diets containing extracted fat and diets containing intact fat.

Dried blood meal is commonly used as a high-quality protein source in nursery pig diets. Growth studies have indicated that blood meal can be a better protein source than dried skim milk, fish meal, and soy protein concentrate.  However, the growth effects of blood meal vary across studies; this may be due to differences in protein quality.

Limited data exist on digestibility of crude protein and amino acids in blood meal produced from different species and with different drying methods.  Therefore, an experiment was conducted to measure apparent (AID) and standardized (SID) ileal digestibility of crude protein and amino acids in two sources of blood meal.

Raw soybeans contain antinutritional factors such as trypsin inhibitors (TI) and lectins.  The production of soybean meal involves a heating step, which reduces these anti-nutritional factors. However, conventional soybean meal contains compounds which can cause digestive disturbances in weanling pigs. Soybean meal is therefore limited in pig starter diets. Other protein sources, such as fish meal, casein, and soy protein isolate, are used for young pigs.

Two new soybean products were recently introduced to the U.S. feed market.  Fermented soybean meal (FSBM) and enzyme-treated soybean meal (ESBM) are believed to have a lower concentration of antinutritional factors and a higher concentration of crude protein and amino acids than conventional soybean meal.  They are also believed to be better tolerated by young pigs. However, not much is known about the digestibility of the protein in these two products.

This experiment was conducted to compare the digestibility of amino acids in weanling pigs of FSBM, ESBM, conventional de-hulled soybean meal, fish meal, casein, and soy protein isolate.

Buhler, Inc. of Minneapolis, Minnesota has developed a new fractionation process to more efficiently produce ethanol from corn. In this process, the germ is removed from the corn grain and the degermed grain is passed through roller mills and aspirators to remove the bran. The endosperm is fermented to produce ethanol, and the rest of the grain is left as a co-product, referred to here as HP-DDG_Buhler.