Once upon a time, commercial hog diets consisted mainly of corn and soybeans, but the menu has greatly expanded out of necessity since commodity prices increased a few years ago.
That expansion has brought with it both opportunities and challenges for producers, according to Iowa State University Professor of Animal Science Dr. John Patience, who spoke to swine veterinarians last week at the Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica (BIVI) Swine Health Seminar in Denver. “Corn and soybean meal are relatively uniform ingredients. Now that we’ve moved to using products like wheat middlings, bakery by-products, and distillers grains, those are ingredients that are quite variable in their nutrient composition. So, we have to do a lot more quality control, for example,” he explained. “We also have to make sure when we use these ingredients that they fit into our feed manufacturing system since some of them are a lot less dense, bulk-wise.”
Dr. Patience says we are seeing diets now with 20% or less corn in them. “Right now the Europeans have a lot more experience with using these diverse kinds of diets than we do, but we’re catching up,” he said, adding that the U.S. pork industry is extremely innovative and responsive to new information “and that has really shown itself remarkably well in the last five years.”
Listen to my interview with Dr. Patience here: ISU Animal Scientist Dr. John Patience
BIVI Summit at Mile High 2012 photo album
At the 
The final session of the
The weather is fabulous in Seattle this weekend, but directors of the
While all the USB directors I have featured so far are from Illinois, there are directors outside of the Midwest! One of them is Jacob Parker from North Carolina who says the export market for US soybeans is critically important for the industry, accounting for over half the production nationwide.
Participants in the
The first ever
Jim says this the first meeting in a series to plan out projects for FY 2013. “So this is the first meeting to gather industry and regional inputs, then we’ll be working on strategy, and finally we come together and get final approval for all the projects we come up with,” Jim said. “That’s about a six month process and this is step one in the process.”
The Novus Arkansas site was developed in 2006 to manufacture MHA® feed supplement, a source of methionine, an essential amino acid in premixes and farm feed mills which provides benefits to laying hens and other livestock and companion animals. The new expansion features a 45,000 square foot manufacturing facility for MINTREX®, Novus’ chelated trace mineral products for aquaculture, poultry, pork, beef, dairy and pet nutrition. In keeping with the commitment Novus has to sustainability, the expanded facility earned Silver LEED Certification from the U.S. Green Building Council. The company headquarters in St. Charles, Missouri has earned 
The 






Specifically, the EU registration applies to MINTREX® Zinc (Zn), MINTREX® Manganese (Mn) and MINTREX® Copper (Cu).
At the recent International Poultry Expo/Feed Expo, 
The 2010 International Poultry Expo/Feed Expo is getting underway here in Atlanta with associated conferences today, including the Poultry Scientific Forum, Pet Food Conference and Animal Agriculture Environmental Sustainability Summit. 