High Fibre Diets – Satiety in Sows and Offspring Growth Performance
Feeding high fiber diets to sows during gestation is reported to play a positive role in the swine industry both in terms of animal welfare (improved satiety in feed-restricted pregnant sows) and production (increased weaning weight) during the gestation-lactation period. This study was designed to determine the effect of hydrothermal processing...
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Ken Engele
Pretreatment of Feed Ingredients to Enhance Value
Grains are typically harvested at <15% moisture to maintain quality during storage. When harvested at >15%, artificial drying may be employed but this increases cost. Low-quality high-moisture grains may also be preserved by acidification. These experiments were conducted with the overall objective of determining whether the benefits of acidification on performance and...
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Ken Engele
Group Sow Housing
The National Sow Housing Conversion Project (NSHCP) was a Canada-wide project with the purpose of providing group sow housing information to swine producers and industry partners. For more information please click on the image below. ...
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Ken Engele
2019 Prairie Swine Centre Annual Report
The 2019 Prairie Swine Centre Annual Research Report is now available for download. You can view your copy at: Prairie Swine Centre Annual Report \...
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Ken Engele
Evaluating New Crop Grain
Density or bushel weight is commonly used to estimate grain quality. Bushel weight is easy, low-cost and fast, ADF and NDF are none of these. Research over the past 20 years, however, has been unable to demonstrate a good relationship between bushel weight and feeding quality of grains for swine. Frost damaged grains often have...
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Ken Engele
Feeding Green to Save Green
Pork producers are always looking for new ways in which they can increase their efficiencies through reducing feed costs. Feeding coproducts from the fuel ethanol industry like distillers dried grains with solubles (DDGS) or from the wheat flour industry like millrun can reduce feed cost and spare...
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Ken Engele
Evaluation of a Prototype Air-Filtered Transport Trailer
In response to the need by the industry for a livestock vehicle that addresses increased animal welfare and biosecurity during transport, a prototype air-filtered trailer was developed. Design parameters were gathered from a stakeholders’ survey and initial design configuration options were narrowed down using computer simulation. The final design featured a trailer...
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Ken Engele
Interaction of Dietary Fibre and Immune Challenge on Threonine Requirements and Pig Robustness
Sub-clinical disease results in reduced growth and less efficient use of nutrients. With the elimination of in-feed antibiotics for growth promotion it is increasingly important to understand the interaction between nutrition and health and nutrient requirements during disease challenge events. This project set out to more fully understand the interaction between dietary...
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Ken Engele
Research Scientists featured in September edition of Journal of Animal Science
The following articles can be found in the Journal of Animal Science, Volume 97, Issue 9, September 2019. Effect of supplemental threonine above requirement on growth performance of Salmonella typhimurium challenged pigs fed high-fiber diets Michael O Wellington, Atta K Agyekum, Kimberley Hamonic, John K Htoo, Andrew...
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Ken Engele
Development of a Commercial Scale Air Treatment System
An air cleaning technology based on biotrickling filtration developed in previous phases of the project was scaled up and tested at the PSC swine grower-finisher facility. Results showed that the air treatment units were effective in reducing the levels of ammonia, dust, and odour from the air stream at...
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Ken Engele
Creep Feeding in the Farrowing Room: Do the Outcomes Depend on Weaning Age?
Creep feed could benefit older weaned piglets by supplementing nutrients in sows’ milk. Additionally, it could aid the transition to solid feed at weaning, perhaps more of a benefit to the younger weaned piglet. In our experiment, body weight at nursery exit was greater in piglets offered creep feed...
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Ken Engele
Practical Environmental Enrichment Strategies for Piglets
Pigs are intelligent and curious from birth, and the lactation and nursery periods are critical for their mental and physical development. Despite this, research on suitable enrichments for piglets is lacking. Research that has been done found that piglets given enrichment had increased play and exploratory behaviours...
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Ken Engele