Corn dried distillers grains with solubles is a co-product of the ethanol industry and oil extracted corn DDGS is corn DDGS with part of the oil removed.

Dr Malachy Young, the manager of nutrition research with Gowan's Feed Consulting, says to better understand the nutrient content, specifically the energy content, of reduced oil corn DDGS and the impact of feeding this ingredient on grow-finish performance Gowan's conducted a feeding trial involving 1050 pigs ranging in weight from 25 to 125 kilograms.

Dr Malachy Young-Gowan's Feed Consulting

We formulated six different diets with 30 per cent of the diet containing reduced oil corn DDGS with the six different diets having allotted different energy values to the corn DDGS.

We fed those diets and measured live animal performance and also carcass performance.

As we increased the assumed energy value of the trial the feed intake increased and feed conversion efficiency got poorer.

The backfat thickness of the pigs was reduced as the assumed energy value increased and carcass weight, we saw a quadratic response, so reduced at the 2.15 megacals assumed net energy where as was the lowest carcass weight.

The main findings of the trial, we determined that the energy value of the reduced oil DDGS was between two and 2.3 megacals per kilogram which is lower the new assumed energy value for reduced oil DDGS from the new NCR in 2012.

Dr Young says the reduced oil levels in the oil extracted corn DDGS will result in lower net energy contents than the traditional higher oil DDGS but the reduced oil DDGS will have a less negative impact on carcass quality which is a positive.