Meeting individual nutrient requirements to improve nutrient efficiency and the sustainability of growing pig production systems

Description

Precision feeding involves the use of feeding techniques that provide individual animals with diets tailored daily to production objectives (e.g. maximum growth). A method of estimating energy and nutrient requirements by integrating current relevant knowledge on pig metabolism has been developed and incorporated into a mathematical model. This chapter reviews recent research projects which indicate that feeding pigs a diet tailored daily to their individual requirements is essential to maximize nutrient efficiency and ensure the sustainability of the pig industry by reducing the excretion of nutrients and nutrient constituents and lowering feeding costs. This new nutritional approach represents a paradigm shift in pig feeding, because the optimal dietary nutrient level is no longer considered a static population attribute, but rather a dynamic process that evolves independently for each animal. Precision feeding is a highly promising avenue for improving resource use efficiency in comparison with conventional group phase-feeding programmes.

Table of contents

1 Introduction 2 Sources of nutrient inefficiency 3 Current methods of estimating nutrient requirements 4 Real-time estimation of individual pig nutrient requirements 5 Case study 6 Summary 7 Future trends 8 References