Development of New Nexgen Advanced Pig Starters Without Fishmeal

Michael Edmonds, Ph.D., Vice President, Swine and Poultry Nutrition

Fishmeal has become an expensive ingredient to use in early pig starters. Because we have evaluated and researched several high-quality ingredients such as cheese proteins, poultry meal and soy proteins (Hamlet HP 300) over the last several years, we designed the following experiments to see if we could use combinations of these protein sources to replace fishmeal and reduce feed costs without negatively affecting performance. We conducted the following study at the Kent Research Farm with 260 pigs and 26 pens per treatment. The average initial starting weight was 12.3 lbs. The NexGen (NG) feeds that were evaluated during the first 14 days were NG 8-13 pellets (Days 0-7) and NG 12-17 grind and mix (Days 7-14). In addition, we removed the fishmeal from NG 17-40 Mixer ZO and fed this grind and mix program during Days 14-21 followed by common diets the last 15 days.

The data are shown below:

*contained added fishmeal during Days 0-21
**value of pig weight gain minus feed cost

During Days 0-14 and Days 0-34, we observed slight advantages in gains and feed efficiencies from the NG Advanced diets compared to those early wean diets that contained added fishmeal. In addition, we found lower cost of gains as well as improvements in net return of $0.15 and $0.44/pig for pigs on the NG Advanced during Days 0-14 and 0-36, respectively.

Summary

The new NG Advanced formulations resulted in small improvements in performance, lower diet costs along with favorable net returns compared to the previous formulas that contained fishmeal.