Hubbard Launches PowerStart for Late-Weaned Pigs
By Pork news source
| Monday, July 12, 2010
Production trends show pork producers shifting from earlier to later weaning schedules — delaying the process in favor of older, heavier pigs at the time of transition.
According to Stewart Galloway, senior field swine nutritionist for Hubbard Feeds, the industry’s average weaning age has increased from 18 days to 19.6 days.
“The nutritional requirement for later-weaned pigs is less demanding, and less expensive in regards to inputs and nutritional demands,” he says. “Regardless of weaning age, pigs still go through a stressful transition, and producers need to make sure weanlings have all the nutrients required for good gut development.”
To accommodate the shift, Hubbard Feeds is responding by introducing PowerStart, a new two-phase starter program designed for pigs weaned at 19 days or older. “With PowerStart, we identified an opportunity to effectively redesign a starter program for transitioning pigs which not only achieves a high quality feed ratio – but at a lower cost,” Galloway notes.
The product line includes three cost-effective formulations designed to meet pigs’ nutritional needs at various weaning ages:
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PowerStart 19/13 is a complete starter diet for pigs 19 to 25 days old and 13 to 16 pounds. The feed contains digestible carbohydrates and amino acids from high-quality milk products and steam-rolled oats, plus essential oils for gut health. The starter also furnishes complex, specialty animal proteins, including plasma — but with no fish meal.
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PowerStart 25/16 Complete is designed for pigs 25 to 40 days of age weighing 16 to 25 pounds. It is to be fed for 14 days as a follow up to PowerStart 19/13. Available as a complete feed the formulation matches pigs’ maturing digestive systems, which have developed enough by 25 days to process soy proteins and grain starches.
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PowerStart 25/16 Basemix is designed for pigs 25 to 40 days of age weighing 16 to 25 pounds. It is to be fed for 14 days as a follow up to PowerStart 19/13. The blend of ingredients helps pigs shift from a complex, highly fortified diet to one with more soybean meal and corn-- allowing producers to grind the mix into a complete feed formulation.
In four trials, weaned pigs 19 days and older were fed PowerStart 19/13 for seven days, followed by PowerStart 25/16 for 14 days. Their performance was compared to pigs fed Hubbard’s more complex Lean Start starters.
The PowerStart pigs performed just as well as the pigs receiving the more complex diet with no significant differences in average daily gain, feed intake, or feed efficiency. But PowerStart delivered an economic advantage of 70 cents to $1 per pig.
According to Galloway, the PowerStart program’s underlying goal is to help the older weaned pig make a smooth transition at weaning, get good growth and feed conversion performance and be economical, especially when evaluating it on a feed cost/pig basis.
To confirm industry shifts toward delayed weaning ages, Hubbard Feeds completed a survey among 261 producers during the 2010 World Pork Expo. Results showed that 57 percent of survey respondents are weaning pigs between 19 and 21 days of age.
For more perspective, PowerStart will be the featured topic in the July edition of The Hub, an exclusive monthly podcast from Hubbard Feeds. Pork producers, nutritionists and veterinarians can sign up for a free subscription at www.hubbardswine.com. The Hub podcasts are e-mailed automatically each month, and listeners will have an opportunity to provide feedback and respond to polls on topics of interest to the pork industry. Podcast transcripts also are available for download.
The Hub podcasts are the newest addition to the tips and tools Hubbard Feeds has developed to deliver more critical information to livestock producers, including nutrition management guides, information sheets and calculators.
Source: Hubbard Feeds
