The pig industry is experiencing a price-cost squeeze, with pigmeat price low and feed cost high.

This is responsible for the negative profitability being experienced. Little can be done by the farmer to increase the price received for pigs. However, they always have some control over the feed cost per kg gain. Reducing this must be the primary aim currently. Addressing many factors can help reduce feed cost per kg gain (reduced feed wastage, improving feed efficiency, feed budgeting etc) and it is not just the price paid per tonne of feed that is the only contributor. Nonetheless, it is important to look at ways to make a tonne of feed less expensive. With this in mind I wish to deal with the following issues: diet formulation/ingredient composition, pelleting, enzyme addition to diets and more accurate feed formulation.

1 Diet formulation / Ingredient composition

Ingredient prices were obtained from three commercial sources on 1 October 2018 and a series of finisher diets were formulated based on a distinct specification (see Table 1).

Tables a to g summarise the diets formulated. A diet based on barley, wheat and soybean meal (a) was first formulated and the savings arising from subsequent formulations (b-g) were expressed relative to this. Columns titled Min and Max indicate limits in % inclusion allowed in the diet for particular ingredients. Price refers to the spot price for a particular ingredient and Upper (€/t) refers to the highest price at which a particular ingredient would come into the diet.

From this exercise, using current spot prices for ingredients, it was found that a diet of the same specification can be formulated so that it is about €28/t cheaper if maize, sunflower and rapeseed meal or maize wheat pollard and rapeseed meal are used with soybean meal as the main ingredients. If for practical reasons maize must be capped at 20% or 50% inclusion then the saving over a wheat-barley-soybean meal diet is still €12.39 and €21.50, respectively. It was obvious from this that maize is cheap relative to other cereals currently, so a diet was formulated where maize was the only other ingredient apart from wheat, barley and soybean meal that was allowed into the diet. The saving over a wheat, barley and soybean meal diet in this instance was €12.54/t. The latter indicated that to get the greatest saving, then maize should be included in the diet but that there was also a need to include other ingredients like wheat pollard and rapeseed meal in the diet also. Finally, pot ale syrup is a liquid co-product that can be included in liquid fed pig diets and its availability has increased in recent times due to increased activity in the whiskey distillery sector. At a current price of €59/t of liquid pot-ale syrup (32% DM) or €160.41/t at 87% DM, pot ale will come into the diet to about 6% with a resulting saving of about €5.50/t of feed.

Caution: Spot prices on 1 October for October to December 2018. Some ingredients can vary greatly in AA and energy content. It is important to get as much information on the ingredient batches as possible and formulate using this information. Additionally it may be necessary to set inclusion limits for some ingredients. Finally, it is critically important to change the premix used every time that the formulation of the diet has been changed.

2 Pelleting

Pelleting improves FCE in pigs as it increases nutrient digestibility, increases nutrient density per unit volume and reduces feed wastage during feeding. Based on an experiment conducted at Moorepark in 2017/2018, feeding a pelleted diet is worth about€21/t of feed and is preferable if purchasing feed and dry or wet/dry feeding. Therefore, depending on the cost charged for pelleting by the miller (eg €5-7/t), a net benefit of €14-16/t of finisher feed arises from feeding a finisher diet in pelleted rather than in meal form.

3. Enzyme addition to diets

There is a role for feed enzymes when diets are formulated close to pigs’ requirements and this is especially the case when ingredient prices are high. Feed enzymes, when effective, improve FCE and in this way confer a financial benefit to the producer. A recent meta-analysis from Moorepark of published results on feed enzymes found that enzyme addition resulted in most consistent results when:

1. Mannanase was supplemented to corn-based diets.

2. Complexes of enzymes were supplemented to corn-, wheat- or barley-based diets.

3. Protease was supplemented to barley-based diets.

4. The density of the diet used was low.

Experiments at Moorepark in the past few years also found that enzyme addition resulted in feed cost savings of between €1.59 and €2.50/finisher pig, depending on the enzyme type and ingredient composition of the diet.

5 More accurate formulation

When it comes to formulating diets for grow-finisher pigs, one size no longer fits all – we simply don’t have that luxury anymore. There is a range of growth rates and intakes on Irish units and therefore the dietary requirements of these pigs differ. Nonetheless, few producers feed unit specific diets. In order to reduce feed costs, this must change. The starting point is to know the growth rate and the intake of your pigs over specific periods of growth. Having this information can allow the formulation of bespoke diets for pigs which will optimise their growth and feed efficiency, ultimately leading to a feed cost reduction per kg gain.