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...
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.
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Assessing Particle Size and the Cost of Grinding
Particle size reduction improves feed efficiency in all stages of the production cycle in pigs. Based on studies by researchers at Kansas State University (KSU), an average particle size of 700 to 800 microns (um) is recommended. However, this recommendation is based on studies conducted using...
Reducing Water Consumption in Swine Barns: Alternatives for Animal Drinking and Barn Cleaning
Evaluation of selected water conservation measures involving drinkers and different cleaning procedures revealed that 60% reduction in water wastage was achieved with a drinking trough (with side panel and constant water level) to nipple drinkers. The use of conventional nozzle...
Temperatures Within a Truck Transporting Pigs During Winter and Summer Months in Western Canada
Transportation, which is an unfamiliar to the pig – is one of the most critical periods in pig handling before slaughter. It possibly involves economic losses due to deaths, ‘suspect’ animals on arrival at the processing plant, and reduced meat quality. Losses are...
