Researchers with the University of Manitoba's Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences in partnership with the Puratone Corporation are conducting digestibility studies on corn DDGS sourced from Minnesota, corn-wheat DDGS sourced from Manitoba and zero-tannin faba beans grown in the Interlake then feeding trials will be conducted from the nursery phase through to market.

Carole Furedi, the continuous improvement and research facilitator with Puratone, says researchers will track feed consumption, water intake and growth rate, manure output will be assessed and carcass characteristics will be evaluated.

Carole Furedi-Puratone Corporation

Usually what we do when we do swine trials is we measure the impact of ingredients on pig performance, how do they grow, what's their feed efficiency and how do they hit the packer's grid but now what we need to start looking at is also how do the ingredients impact the manure end of pig production.

Come 2013 there is new legislation that's coming into play where we're going to have to spread manure based on a crop's ability to remove phosphorus from the soil.

This will change how much manure we can spread on any given field so we're trying to understand the manure end of pig production a bit more than we did before.

The digestibility studies and the metabolisable energy studies should be done by the fall and then our nursery barn will be filling in October which will then fill into our finishing farm in December.

It's looking like all pigs should be marketed by March of 2011.

Ms Furedi is confident the information gathered through this study will be of value to feed manufacturers in formulating rations using these ingredients.

She says if zero-tannin faba beans prove to be viable in swine rations it will give pork producers another ingredient option and crop producers another crop to add to their rotations.