Sorghum Offers Feed Value Benefits For Swine
FLORENTNO LOPEZ
LUBBOCK, TEXAS
Grain sorghum is recognized as the fifth most important cereal grain in production worldwide and the third most important cereal grain in the United States. The crop has a longstanding history of being fed to multiple animal species worldwide. Sorghum continues being used to produce high quality feeds for swine, poultry, including ducks, to aquaculture and pet foods.
With continual increases in protein consumption worldwide, it is important that cereal grains provide the nutrition necessary to improve growth rates, feed conversion and meat quality. Grain sorghum has this ability. Likewise, continued improvements in sorghum cultivars should help provide additional nutrients.
The Sorghum Checkoff continues to fund key projects to study and develop information to help educate swine producers of the nutritional values of grain sorghum. Swine Nutritionist Dr. Robert Goodband has recently updated the Sorghum Checkoff’s Swine Feeding Guide with new information concerning sorghums ability to meet the needs of all swine diets.
Some of the key findings in this newest guide are listed below:
Grain sorghum is a feedstuff with an excellent nutritional value for swine and can be used as the primary grain source in all swine diets,replacing all corn, wheat or barley. Numerous feeding trials in the last 20 years with nursery and finishing pigs and gestating and lactating sows have demonstrated the value of feeding sorghum relative to corn and other grains.
Amino acid profile
Sorghum contains more of the essential amino acids threonine, tryptophan and valine than corn on a standardized ileal digestible basis. Thus, greater quantities of supplemental amino acids (lysine and methionine) can be used to replace soybean meal in the diet. This advantage allows for potentially less expensive formulation options with grain sorghum-based diets compared to corn.
Digestible phosphorus
An important characteristic from an economic and environmental standpoint is that grain sorghum contains greater digestible phosphorus than corn. Therefore, diets formulated with grain sorghum require less supplemental inorganic phosphorus (monocalcium or dicalciumphosphate). As a result, there is less phosphorus excreted in swine waste, a benefit to the environment.
Fatty acid
The fatty acid profile of the diet fed to pigs influences the carcass fat iodine value, a measure of carcass fat firmness.Research has shown that pigs fed sorghum-based diets had less linoleic acid and polyunsaturated fatty acids in back- and jowl-fat than pigs fed corn (Benz et al., 2010).Another advantage of the low iodine value of grain sorghum is that it allows more flexibility in diet formulation.
Sorghum processing
One factor essential to maximize sorghum’s energy content is proper feed processing. Grain sorghum has a small hard kernel relative to corn. Thus, proper processing by fine grinding is essential to obtain the optimum particle size. The swine industry’s understanding of proper feed processing of sorghum over the last 15 years may be one of the reasons why its nutritional value has increased relative to corn in more recent experiments.
Ethanol and sorghum DDGS
The use of grain sorghum as a feedstock for ethanol production has been increasing in recent years and could make a large contribution to the nation’s fuel ethanol requirements. These trends indicate that the supply of co-products, such as sorghum dried distillers grains with solubles (DDGS), will increase with the growing demand for grain sorghum used for ethanol production.
More detailed information about research on the feed value of sorghum for swine can be found at http://www.sorghumcheckoff.com/assets/media/pdfs/2016_09_02_SwineFeedingGuide.pdf
For other agricultural animals, visit http://www.sorghumcheckoff.com/market-opportunities/livestock-feed. ∆
FLORENTINO LOPEZ: Executive Director, United Sorghum Checkoff Program