Winning the battle with rising feed costs
October 8, 2021
Maximizing the use of opportunity ingredients. Getting more value from protein sources. Boosting nutrition capture to reduce feed costs.
These are just a few examples of the rising potential now emerging with advances in feed technology newly available to western Canadian hog producers.
Leading the charge is the next generation of protease enzyme technology.
The new type – lead in Western Canada by newly registered ProSparity – features a new “multi-component” protease component.
It is designed to unlock higher nutritional value from protein sources, allowing swine farmers to achieve optimized feed utilization and related performance at reduced cost.
Livestock industries in Canada, the US and beyond have faced a landscape of rising ingredient and feed costs inter-twined with higher volatility and often more limited economical choices in protein sourcing.
The new multi-component type of protease solution address these challenges in a way that represents a huge leap forward compared to traditional single source protease options.
Available in flexible formats offered in both liquid and dry concentrations, it also features a low inclusion rate that improves least cost formulation.
The industry has continued to learn more from science about the level to which the dietary proteins used in animal diets are not fully digestible by pigs – it’s very substantial across protein sources and that has represented a growing opportunity for solutions that can unlock that untapped value.
Particularly in today’s industry environment, there's a very strong economic benefit in recapturing dietary costs in this manner, by utilizing feed additives such as protease that target the undigested component of these proteins – breaking them down so they can be absorbed and used by the animals.
A growing body of research has provided a more sophisticated picture of the diversity among protein sources – showing at a more detailed level why solutions with broad spectrum protease activity have far greater opportunity for success.
New multi-component protease technology features multiple strains, with each strain chosen based on their specificity and binding affinity to a full range of protein substrates. This allows the solution to address a larger portion of otherwise indigestible protein, to achieve the best ‘total breakdown’ possible.
Research shows this technology is highly flexible to multiple ingredients including corn, hard grains such as wheat distillers grains, oil seeds and their meals as well as a number of non-traditional or “opportunity” ingredients.
It is designed to maintain high protease activity throughout the entirety of the gastrointestinal tract no matter what the protein source.In addition to improving nutrient digestibility, this new option has also been shown to deactivate antinutritional factors found in protein sources – adding further value.
Based on the results early adopters are seeing, this technology is well positioned to rapidly emerge as one of the most straightforward, ready-to-go options to consistently save dollars on feed costs.
The multi-component protease is just one of several advances coming out of research and development of new “Bio-Catalyst technology” – a broad platform of feed science that is helping transform the future of swine production.
Bio-Catalyst technology is based on the latest science from research institutions led by the University of Manitoba. It provides a comprehensive platform for maximizing the capability of feed enzymes to unlock value and unique advantages from a full range of production systems.
“Bio-Catalyst technology represents the new future of feed enzymes – offering greater power and versatility than has ever been possible with this category of feed technology,” says Dr. Anna Rogiewicz of the novel feed enzyme program at the University of Manitoba, built under the leadership of internationally renowned feed technology researcher Dr. Bogdan Slominski.
“The science underlying this technology leverages what we have learned over several decades of research and development, tailored specifically to provide today’s producers with the best tools for the success of their operations. There are many new developments coming from this area of feed technology that swine producers can look forward to in the months ahead.”
