Summary

Mustard meal might thus be a good opportunity ingredient with minimally a nutritional value equal as canola meal.

Introduction

Mustard meal might be a valuable ingredient for the swine industry domestically and internationally. In some export markets, concerns exist regarding the voluntary feed intake of pigs fed mustard instead of canola meal in their diets. This study will therefore compare two diets with either mustard meal or canola meal in the diet at a 15% inclusion rate, which is an inclusion rate that should allow to assess if the feed intake concerns are indeed valid, or not and if growth performance differences exist.

Experimental Procedures

A diet containing 15% canola meal was formulated based on 48% corn, 17% soybean meal and 15% wheat was formulated to 3.45 Mcal DE/kg and 2.60 g apparent digestible lysine/Mcal DE. Replacing canola meal 1:1 with mustard meal created a diet containing 15% mustard meal. The pelleted diets were each fed for 28 days to grower pigs housed 5 pigs per pen.

Results and Discussion

The standard chemical characteristics of mustard meal and canola meal are listed in Table 1. For each of the four weeks of the experiment, voluntary or average daily feed intake of the grower pigs increased gradually, and differences in voluntary feed intake were not observed between pigs fed mustard meal or canola meal (Table 2). For the first three weeks of the experiment, average daily gain and feed efficiency did not differ statistically between pigs fed mustard meal or canola meal (P > 0.10). However, pigs fed mustard meal grew 17% more and had a 6-% unit higher feed efficiency during the last week of the experiment (P < 0.05), resulting in an overall tendency for pigs fed mustard meal to grow faster than pigs fed canola meal.

Conclusion

Mustard meal has a nutritional value equal or superior to that of canola meal and might be a worthwhile opportunity ingredient to consider during period of high prices for protein sources.

Acknowledgements

Sask Pork, Alberta Pork, Manitoba Pork, and Saskatchewan Agriculture Food and Development Fund provided strategic program funding. Project contributors included Canola Council of Canada and the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool.