Is 2021 the Year to Take a Closer Look at Net Energy?

(National Pork Board and the Pork Checkoff)

Change is hard, especially when you are comfortable with what you are currently doing. And let’s face it, most pig production systems aren’t looking for more to do. But the high price of corn, soybean meal and dried distiller’s grains with solubles (DDGS) are causing nutritionists and producers to think a lot deeper about diet formulation this year.

Chad Pilcher, a swine nutritionist with Provimi, says 2021 may be the year where the industry starts spending more time looking into the opportunities a net energy (NE) formulation provides.

Historically, the U.S. has dealt with very simple diets – formulating pig feeds with corn, soybean meal and added fat. “Our energy system didn’t have to be incredibly complicated because we had very simple feedstuffs. The net energy system became a bigger player in Europe because they were using more high-fiber ingredients and more co-products from human food production. Because of this, it became more important to give proper relative value to feedstuffs,” Pilcher explains.

Meanwhile, pig diets were fairly simple in the U.S. and the metabolizable energy (ME) system served the industry quite well, he says. But when ethanol production took off, and DDGS became a main component of diets, it became necessary to properly value that ingredient. 

“At the same time the ethanol industry came on board in the late 2000s, feed prices got really high. We were searching for alternative feedstuffs to help reduce costs. In order to get the best predictable performance, we had to start assigning the proper energy values to those ingredients,” Pilcher says.

That’s where net energy came into the picture for some nutrition programs in the U.S. From Pilcher’s perspective, a NE system provides the best predictor of performance of all energy systems available today. So, what holds people back from formulating diets based on NE?

Why Not NE?
Most of the nutritionists trained in North America were trained in the ME system, Pilcher points out. Because of this, many nutritionists are simply more comfortable formulating diets in the ME system.

“It takes a little leap of faith to move to a NE system,” Pilcher says. “Over the last 10 to 15 years, there's been more validation of net energy in North America that's helping grow the comfort level of the NE system. But more validation is warranted to get people more accepting of it.”

He says there's a growing portion of the industry that's using a true NE system and a shrinking group using a true ME system. He believes the majority are somewhere in the middle, where they modify ME values to better reflect what the performance of the pigs in the field tells them. In actuality, Pilcher says this is much closer to a net energy value than it would be to a true metabolizable energy.

“Nutritionists are often putting out fires and dealing with the problem of the day,” Pilcher says. “They don’t have the time it takes to go through and change the way they value ingredients. It's not something that just shows up in your formulation system and you start using it, you have to do a lot of work to get it there.”

John Patience, professor of animal science at Iowa State University, agrees. He believes making the move to net energy is worthwhile, but it is not a simple thing to do. 

“The greatest benefit of adopting the NE system is reduced feed cost and improved return over feed cost and net income. Lowering feed cost without considering animal performance and thus net income would be a big mistake,” Patience says. “Some people believe that NE results in improved performance, and if applied correctly, this is true. But the greater benefit is lower feed cost and improved net income.”

Net energy assigns economic value to ingredients better than ME, but Patience cautions that the switch to NE from ME has to be done right. NE is one tool in the toolbox available to pork producers to maximize net income on their overall farming operation.

Jim Hedges, a nutritionist with Ralco Feeds, believes NE makes more sense, especially now.

“We’re always looking at how we can make pigs perform better,” Hedges says. “How can we cut costs? When hog farmers lose a lot of money, that’s serious. You need to look at what appears to make sense and see if you can improve the situation.”

What Are the Keys to NE Formulation and Commercialization? 
Patience says there are three challenges to implementing NE formulation and commercialization. First, the industry needs NE values for ingredients that are not only accurate, but values that can also be adjusted as the composition of the ingredient changes. Second, the industry needs to know what levels of NE are needed in the diet to support the pig performance desired. And finally, he says energy is simply a complicated topic.

“All energy systems have their limitations,” Patience says. “Understanding the limitations of the NE system can be critical to maximizing the benefit to using NE in diet formulation. But this is also true for ME and DE.”

More research is needed at the university level, Hedges adds. The more research that is done on NE values, the more comfortable future nutritionists will be with the NE system. But NE research isn’t easy to conduct.

“For NE, you have to measure heat (energy) the pig has lost from breathing, digesting feed and other essential body functions,” Hedges says. “You need special, expensive equipment to measure NE. It is more detailed than ME or DE. NE is the energy in feed ingredients available for production after digestion, respiration and other essential body functions have been taken into consideration.”

Fortunately, there are only a few ingredients that need to be determined – corn, soybean meal, DDGS and fat, Hedges says. There are many more ingredients that would be helpful, but these represent a major portion of the typical ingredients for finishing hogs. Additionally, you need to determine the NE requirement for the different phases of the life of the hog.

There’s nothing like skyrocketing ingredients to get people interested in evaluating energy, Pilcher says. 

“I think higher feed prices force us to think about it more and really understand what's the best way to supply energy. In the end, for people to implement it, we've got to have values that are accurate,” Pilcher says. “If we just take book values, we're probably going to fail. We have to be more dynamic than that and take more measurements and really understand variation that occurs among sources and within sources.”

What’s Next for NE?
There are not many places in the world where you can truly measure the net energy of a feedstuff, Pilcher says. 

“What Dr. Hans Stein's group is doing at the University of Illinois with indirect calorimetry is going to add a lot of value. There are other research centers around the world that are doing this work. But having this capability available in the U.S. is going to help advance the NE system for North America,” Pilcher says.

In order to push NE forward, Patience says there is a need to know the response curve to changes in NE levels in the diet (but this also applies to DE and ME). 

“Energy is a big driver of profitability in pork production,“ Patience says. “Knowing how the pig will respond to changes in NE is, therefore, very important. With this information in hand, feeding programs that maximize farm net income are much easier to develop. As an example, for many farms, lowering the energy content of the diet will lower growth rate. Producers have to ask the question if their pigs grow slower, will their net income go up or down? Net energy becomes a useful tool to help answer that question.”

Hedges says people may not realize how much data are available about NE diet formulation. He encourages farmers to try it and keep an open mind.

“Be willing to adapt to new technology,” Hedges says. “If you’re a farmer feeder and have corn in the bin, it would make a lot of sense to use a feeding program that minimizes the soybean meal that you have to purchase and allows you to feed more of the corn you grew.”

More from Farm Journal's PORK:

3 Ways to Lessen the Impact of High Feed Prices in Pork Production

Don’t Pay For Energy Lost During Digestion, Swine Nutritionists Say

Finishing Diet Formulation Tips for Summer 2021

 

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