Scientists with the University of Manitoba are evaluating lines of winter wheat from plant development to end use for ethanol production and complimentary cattle, swine and poultry feeding operations.

As part of the project dried distillers grain with solubles samples from different ethanol processing plants are being evaluated for nutrient composition and availability in animal diets and assessed in feeding trials.

Dr. Martin Nyachoti, who is overseeing the swine research, says characterizing the digestibility of nutrients and making that data available will allow nutritionists to formulate rations more accurately.

Dr. Martin Nyachoti-University of Manitoba

When you ferment grains to produce ethanol, you tend to concentrate some of the nutrients that are contained in these grains so that you tend to have an increase in the magnitude of three times what the levels were in the original grains.

For example they have fairly high levels of phosphorus and that phosphorus, we think that it's a lot more available than it is in the original grains.

So they are likely to become a very good source of phosphorus in the diets.

They also have very high levels of protein and the amino acids that are critical for proper performance of pigs so we think that it will also make a significant contribution to the protein content and they may also be a good source of energy in swine rations.

But we need to look at that, particularly considering that DDGS, they do also have very high levels of fibre compared to the original grains.

Dr. Nyachoti explains fibre dilutes the nutritive value of ingredients so, for example, DDGS can not be fed in high amounts to very young pigs because they will not be able to extract the nutrients efficiently.