Dr. Megan Bible, a nutritionist for North and Central America with Hamlet Protein, spoke with The Pig Site’s Sarah Mikesell at the 2023 World Pork Expo in Des Moines, Iowa, USA.

“I would think one thing that everyone will agree with is that the weather has been absolutely fabulous,” said Dr. Bible. “This has been one of the best World Pork Expo’s for weather for many, many years.”

The great weather brought people into the booth, and she said it has kept people in the Hamlet tent longer, which was very busy throughout the show. Many customers came in to discuss what’s new at Hamlet and to get answers to questions and issues they were dealing with on-farm.

Well-known swine researcher spoke at Hamlet Protein tent

“On Wednesday morning, we had Dr. Hans Stein, animal science professor and researcher at University of Illinois, as a guest speaker at the Hamlet tent,” said Dr. Bible.

There was excellent attendance for Dr. Stein’s session including customers and industry people at the show. Dr. Stein spoke about reducing nursery diet costs in the US and around the world. He also discussed protein kinetics.

“According to Dr. Stein, if you're reducing the cost of the nursery diet, you want to make sure that you're keeping up your performance level,” said Dr. Bible. “If your baby pigs don’t start out well, then obviously, you're going to have issues down the road.”

Dr. Stein spoke about watching out for the calcium to phosphorus ratio. The ratio should not spread out too far apart. Dr. Stein also explained that most people aren't looking at where their calcium is derived.

“They don't take into account that soybean meal will have calcium or other ingredients may include calcium,” she said. “When you're formulating, you need to make sure that you know exactly what's in your ingredients.”

The producer needs to formulate based on the size of the pig but also to ensure the formulation of the ratio is closer for phosphorus and calcium. If the ratio is not in the proper balance, it will result in a decrease in performance.

“Dr. Stein also spoke about protein kinetics, which is something new with Hamlet Protein that we're very excited about,” said Dr. Bible.

Dr. Stein spoke about some of the ingredients that are used in a nursery diet and how they would be performing for protein kinetics.

“If you would love to learn more about protein kinetics, we are actually going to be presenting a poster at the ASAS meeting in Albuquerque, New Mexico,” added Dr. Bible. “I'm the one that's going to be doing the presentation so come by and see me. I'm more than happy to explain what's new with the protein kinetics world.”

What is protein kinetics?

“At Hamlet Protein, we describe protein kinetics as when protein comes into the intestinal tract, it's going to be digested by enzymes, next it's going to be absorbed across the intestine, and then we need it to enter the blood system,” explained Dr. Bible. “That is all included in the protein kinetics.”

With protein kinetics, the amino acids need to enter the bloodstream, so they can be carried around to be used for maintenance of the body or for tissue building for muscles.

“Protein kinetics is also about the speed or how fast the amino acids are entering the bloodstream,” she said.

Dr. Stein talked about how more producers are using crystal amino acids because these amino acids are absorbed very quickly. By using crystalized amino acids, producers can get other protein sources to absorb quickly as well.

“That is how we're looking at protein kinetics,” said Dr. Bible. “It's very interesting, and it's all new to people. We, at Hamlet Protein, are learning more and more every day about protein kinetics.”