Nutritional Philosophies for Formulation and Practical Approaches to Feeding During Times of Depressed Margins

For swine producers the next year or two will be a period of time where margins will be tight and any unnecessary costs can result in going from profitable to losing money. An area of focus should be around feed costs as feed represents between 60 to 70% of the cost of raising a pig. However, there are multiple philosophies a nutritionist can use to influence feed cost such as true least cost formulation where the main goal is feeding the cheapest diet possible, maximum performance formulation where the focus is on gain and feed efficiency with little focus on diet cost or a blend between the two. The latter is known in Christensen Farms as ‘optimal’ nutrition and formulation. The optimal nutrition and formulation approach involves coordination, teamwork and trust from multiple different areas of swine production. The first area is the ground work of knowing the nutritional requirements of your pig for each phase. Another area is knowing the nutritional value of the feed ingredients available in your geography. Specific to nutrition and formulation there are multiple additional considerations that must be taken into account beyond nutritional requirements and ingredient value. A nutritionist must choose the energy system that they believe best predicts performance (ME, ModME, or NE). Beyond the energy system, knowing the value of energy (fat and/or fiber) in terms of expected response in intake, gain and/or feed efficiency is critical when modeling the expected performance. Nutritionists should also focus on maximizing the value out of the feed that is already going to be fed such as reducing corn grind, pelleting, using phytase and evaluating carbohydrate enzymes as a few examples. In addition to the nutritional requirements and ingredient value nutritionist must be able to anticipate or predict future ingredient costs to be able to use for modeling feed costs and expected return. A nutritionist must also know the value of space and whether the producer is in a short space or long space scenario. Once nutritional requirements, ingredient value, ingredient costs and space are determined then a nutritionist can model finishing performance and cost using multiple different ingredients at different inclusion levels to find the solution that may not maximize growth performance but is the optimal solution that maximizes margin over feed.