Soybean meal is a high quality source of protein for swine diets. Due to the growth in global production of pigs and poultry, demand for soybeans is increasing rapidly, outpacing production. Therefore, other sources of plant protein are being sought to lower feed costs.

The most abundant oilseeds produced in the world, aside from soybeans, are cottonseed, canola seed (rapeseed), and sunflower seed. These may be fed as de-oiled meals, or the full fat seeds can be fed to increase the energy concentration of the diet.

Blood meal and spray dried plasma protein are often included in diets fed to weanling pigs, and blood products are considered excellent sources of protein. The objective of this research was to measure apparent total tract digestibility (ATTD) and standardized total tract digestibililty (STTD) of phosphorus in spray dried animal plasma, porcine blood meal, and avian blood meal fed to weanling pigs. References such as the NRC typically provide relative bioavailability values for phosphorus rather than digestibility values. Relative bioavailability values, however, depend on the standard (e.g., monosodium phosphate or dicalcium phosphate) to which the availability is compared. Thus, these values are believed not to be additive in mixed diets. It is believed that STTD values are additive in mixed diets, and therefore will enable producers to formulate diets that accurately meet the phosphorus requirement of pigs without creating unneccesary excesses that are excreted in the manure.

Fiber digestibility is one factor in the efficiency of energy utilization in fibrous feed ingredients. Fiber can be digested via fermentation in the ileum or in the hindgut.

Fecal matter and ileal digesta from pigs fed one of 29 different diets were analyzed to measure the apparent ileal digestibility (AID) and the apparent total tract digestibility (ATTD) of dietary fiber in different sources of distillers dried grains with solubles (DDGS) and to calculate hindgut fermentation (HGF) of dietary fiber in DDGS fed to growing pigs.

Most corn hybrids grown in the US are genetically modified to resist certain pests or to tolerate certain herbicides. Numerous studies have been conducted to determine the nutritional value of corn that is genetically modified for pest resistance, but there are no published reports about feeding corn that has been modified for both pest resistance and insecticide tolerance to pigs. Investigation into the nutritional value of such corn is, however, warranted, because the use of crops with multiply stacked traits is rapidly increasing; approximately 35 million acres of crops with double- and triple-stacked traits were planted in the United States in 2006.

Two experiments were, therefore, conducted to determine if the nutritional value of corn grain with multiple genetically modified traits is different from that of nontransgenic corn. The hypothesis in both experiments was that pigs fed transgenic corn would not differ in growth performance or carcass characteristics from pigs fed nontransgenic corn.