News from the Midwest Sectional Meetings, March 16-18, 1998, Des Moines, Iowa
Contact:
Nathalie Trottier, MSU Department of Animal Science, 517-432-5140
Jamie DePolo, Outreach Communications, 517-432-1555, ext. 22.
Choosing the Right Corn
Lysine is an amino acid that is essential to animal nutrition. Pigs, especially, have a high lysine requirement and farmers usually supplement their feed with a synthetic form of lysine because the traditonal corn diet lacks enough lysine. Michigan State University assistant professor of animal science Nathalie Trottier is testing the digestibility of two new corn hybrids with high lysine content to see if pigs are effectively using the nutrients, in particular the amino acids, which are essential to protein synthesis.
"More and more livestock diets are based on the digestibility of nutrients by the animals," Trottier said. "If lysine is maximized by pigs, then less nitrogen is excreted in their waste, which is better for the environment and farmers, since they don't have to supplement swine diets anymore."
The two corn hybrids tested were a high lysine corn and a high oil corn. The high lysine corn had significantly higher amino acid digestibility. The high oil corn met both lysine and fat requirements, which is especially important for nursery pigs and lactating sows, which usually need to have their diets supplemented with fat as well as with lysine. Trottier will present her research at the joint Midwest Sectional Meeting of the American Society of Animal Science and American Dairy Science Association in Des Moines, Iowa, from March 16-18.
####