Agriculture: Pigs Nutrition

This document discusses the importance of nutrition in pigs, specifically finisher pigs, and the formulation of a balanced diet for them. It explores the challenges and limitations in ingredient selection and cost effectiveness. The document also suggests alternative ingredients to improve cost effectiveness and discusses the impact of incorporating additional protein sources.

Running head: AGRICULTURE: PIGS NUTRITION
AGRICULTURE: PIGS NUTRITION
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Question 1
Nutrient Adequacy
A grain based diet was formulated for feeding finisher pigs in south eastern Australia, of
which, increased priority was given to a diet consisting of wheat based food ingredients. A grain
based diet, with increased quantities of grains, legumes and beans as compared to meat, seed and
fat based products (Al-Rabadi et al. 2015). According to the Department of Agriculture and
Fisheries (DAF), pigs required adequate amounts of energy for ensuring adequate growth and
development, which vary across life stages (Department of Agriculture and Fisheries
2019). Further, it is worthwhile to note that finisher pigs are grown, adult pigs with a
considerably high body weight of 30 to 70 kg, and are required to be fed a nutritious diet, for the
purpose of being conditioned to produce a softer meat, with improved finishing and body.
Hence, a diet consisting of grains which are adequate in terms of digestible energy (DE) was
incorporated - which implies food ingredients, with energy that is available to the pig for
utilization after digestion and excretion was incorporated (He et al. 2016). DE is negatively
associated with fiber content in the grain - which is why, wheat based grains with comparatively
less fiber was prioritized in the diet, as compared to high fiber, adequate DE grains like barley
and oats. This will ensure that increased amount of utilizable energy is provided to the pigs,
without losses in the form of feces (Zhao et al. 2018). Further, as noted by the DAF, finisher pigs
also require adequate amounts of protein for ensuring muscle tissue growth as well as
conditioning for the production of softer, tender yet firm meat (Department of Agriculture and
Fisheries 2019). Hence, considering that only cereals are not complete sources of protein, legume
and oilseed based food ingredients have also been added, such as soybeans, peas, peanut meals

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and canola. Additional high quality sources of proteins in the form of animal meat, have been
added such as meat meal and tallow. However, care was taken to ensure that such ingredients
were not provided in excessive quantities since they are high in fat which may contribute to
increased adiposity in the finisher pig resulting in reduced market weight and price (Kerr, Trabue
and Andersen 2017). The DAF also specifies the need to incorporated foods rich in the amino
acid lysine in the diet, along with other amino acids essential for a pig such as methionine,
tryptophan, arginine, isoleucine, valine, threonine, leucine, cystine, tyrosine, phenylalanine, and
histidine (Department of Agriculture and Fisheries, 2019). Hence, considering the same grains
which are good sources of lysine such as barley and sorghum have been incorporated, along with
animal based meat sources. To ensure adequate sources of calcium, zinc, phosphorous,
ingredients like fishmeal and duckweed have been added in the diet along with millrun, a
common by-product of flour with high quantities of protein, fiber, phosphorus and amino acids
like lysine and methionine (Garcia et al. 2015). Lastly, a manufactured premix supplying
adequate quantities of amino acids, minerals, fat, fiber, protein and DE has been incorporated,
since relying merely on fresh ingredients will not be enough to meet the high nutrient
requirements of the finisher pig (Ivanova and Ivanov 2016).
Cost and Practicality
As evident from the diet, it was ensured that fresh ingredients comprised of a majority of
the meal due to their cost effectiveness, especially through the incorporation of cereals, legumes
and by products of wheat and oilseeds which are significantly low in cost (Carter et al. 2015).
Further to ensure the same, animal based food ingredients as well as manufactured foods such as
externally added amino acids, tallow, meat meals and other legume based meals like soybeans
were used in as less quantities as possible since these are comparatively more expensive

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(Navarro, Jaworski and Stein 2016). However, it also must be noted that grains, the premix and
legumes had to be used in larger quantities to ensure that DE, protein and amino acid
requirements were met in the finisher pigs – which may affect long term cost effectiveness and
practical usage in the future during times of financial shortages or incompatible climatic
conditions (Carter et al. 2016).
Nutrient Difficulties
As evident from feed composition, difficulties were encountered in establishing a balance
between DE and protein requirements, the reason being that the diet formulated was primarily
grain based with reduced quantities of animal products to ensue cost effectiveness. Considering
that grains and legumes are inadequate in terms of DE content but high in amino acids
collectively, adjusting the amount of such foods resulting in reduced DE content and excesses of
protein in the feed composition (Zhang and Adeola 2017). Further considering that meat
products provide considerable amounts of fats and proteins but are low in terms of energy and
minerals, adjusting their amounts resulted in excesses of amino acids, inadequacies in terms of
energy and loss of balance in fat when amounts were increased. Adjusting the amount of calcium
was a major difficulty considering the absence of milk products used in a primarily grain based
diet (Merriman et al. 2017).
Ingredient Limitations
Ingredients like soybean meal, tallow, meat meal, externally added amino acids and
peanut meat were limited since these were comparatively expensive as compared to vegetarian
foods like wheat, barley, sorghum and maize. In addition, meat products and legume and oilseed
by products like canola, soybean, peanut and linseed meal have been use in limited quantities
since these are high in fat and excesses will contribute to reduced market weight and price due to

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high feeder adiposity (Schwarz et al. 2015). It was also ensured that the premix and externally
added amino acids were used in limited quantities to ensure long term cost effectiveness and
reduced dependency of the feed towards inclusion of food ingredients which are processed
(Carter et al. 2018).
Comments on Realistic Diet
Based on cost effectiveness, the diet is realistic considering its cost of $617 dollars per
tonne, which is possible since cheaper, plant based ingredients were used in greater quantities,
such as wheat, barley, sorghum and certain legumes and wheat based by products. Further the
reduced usage of meat and processed ingredients as compared to plant based ingredients also
contributed in terms of cost effectiveness and feasibility, considering the high cost of meat and
synthetic feed products as compared to the cheaper, easily accessible and easily harvested plant
based ingredients (Mackenzie et al. 2016). However, in terms of nutrient availability, the
prepared feed diet is not feasible for long term finisher pig sustainably. The primarily grain and
legume based diet has resulted in increased incorporation of high energy, moderate amino acid
cereals and limited inclusion of high protein varieties like meat and premixes, resulted in
excesses of amino acid and inadequacies in DE. Further, lack of inclusion of milk or fruit based
products yield difficulties in achieving adequate feed requirements of DE, phosphorous, zinc and
calcium (Gutierrez, Serão and Patience 2016).
Question 2
As per the feed formulation box, wheat and barley have been incorporated as the primary
energy source which means that a price surge due to a drought will result in an additional
increase of the total feed cost by approximately $100 resulting in a total cost of $705 per tonne,

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considering their high amount of usage and increased usage of wheat based products like bran,
starch, millrun and special wheat. Hence, to ensure cost effectiveness, the diet must be
reformulated to incorporate grains which have been demonstrated to be resistant to drought in
south eastern Australia. Hence, to improve cost effectiveness of the diet at present, sorghum can
be used as the primary energy source instead of wheat and barley due to high tolerance to
stresses such as droughts. Further, amounts of soybean can also be increased considering that this
crop can also tolerate relatively short periods of drought (Fang and Xiong 2015). Hence, the
revised feed can be observed in the excel document titled ‘Question 2’. From the highlighted
sections, it can be observed that the total cost of the feed has increased considerably to
approximately $50, which can be attributed to the increased cost of soybean. However, the
increments is cost is must less as compared to the previous surge of $100 due to 60% price
increase of wheat and barley as the primarily used energy source. Further, it can be observed that
the revised demonstrated insignificant changes in nutrient content as compared to the diet
specified in ‘Question 1’ spreadsheet, along with slight increases in DE and amino acids. This
may be due to the fact that sorghum has considerably high quantities of DE while soybean is an
excellent source of protein and essential amino acids (Pan et al. 2017).
Question 3
The revised diet consisted of an additional protein source has been formulated as evident
in the highlighted section, in the excel sheet titled ‘Question 3’. Blood meal has been
incorporated as the additional protein source, which has resulted in an increase in the price as
well as slight change in the nutritional composition of the feed to be given to the finisher pig. It
must be noted that blood meal is a dehydrated product obtained from applying expensive

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technologies such as drying of blood from animal slaughter - which may explain the increased
cost of the feed (Miller 2016). Considering that blood is a connective tissue rich in amino acids
and proteins, increments of DE, amino acids and crude protein prevalent in the revised diet is
justified. Indeed, blood meal has been implicated to be beneficial in terms of protein
supplementation of grain and forage based finisher diets. However, long term effectiveness of
this diet has to be considered since blood meal is not an effective source of all essential amino
acids and is neither palatable as compared to other protein-rich feed ingredients (Department of
Agriculture and Fisheries 2019).

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