Research solves practical swine industry problems

Thursday, March 21, 2024

Sow nutrition central to Lee-Anne Huber's work at Guelph

By Lilian Schaer, for Livestock Research Innovation Corporation

Dr. Lee-Anne Huber's goal for her swine research program at the University of Guelph is simple: To answer nutrition-related questions and solve real-world challenges producers face.

As an associate professor in swine nutrition, Huber sees her position as a service role to the pork industry – and her research focus has evolved to concentrate on sow nutrition.

"In the broadest sense, I help producers maximize efficiency and improve margin over feed cost. Sow nutrition is an area where research is vastly outdated, especially considering the genetic progress of the last 20 years, so we can have a large positive impact," she explains.

As someone who was raised on a mixed beef and pig farm, Huber understands the value of working closely with the industry. Many of her research ideas come directly from producers and nutritionists, with whom she meets regularly – often very informally over a coffee – to talk about challenges in the barn and how her research can help. At the same time, when she has ideas of her own, she floats them past her industry contacts to gauge relevance.

Huber currently has four active research streams, all with projects underway at the new Ontario Swine Research Centre in Elora, Ont.

Lactating sows

It was a conversation with an industry nutritionist that was the catalyst for Huber's research into developing nutrition recommendations for lactating sows. Entering the last year of the four-year project, the team is applying precision feeding technology and exploring feed blending to precisely meet sow nutrition requirements during the transition period as well as each day of lactation.

"Recommendations for lactating sows have been mostly anecdotal with no research to put some data behind those ideas," she says. "We're seeing some really interesting results, and we are now applying those results to see if the feeding strategy has a positive effect on sows."

Amino acids

Since starting her position at Guelph, Huber has also been working on updating feeding recommendations for reproductive sows with a focus on amino acids. The last studies on the subject were done in the 1960s, she notes, and with so much genetic improvement since then, the information is no longer relevant.

"We've done some mathematical equations to scale up requirements from the 1960s to today, but we aren't sure if the metabolism or physiology of the sow is still the same, so I've been working on that for quite a while," she says.

Maximizing mammary development using nutrition

Huber is also building on research by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada research scientist Dr. Chantal Farmer, which found that increasing lysine in late gestation by 40 per cent increased mammary development in sows by a corresponding 40 per cent. Her follow-up work is looking at whether increasing lysine at lower levels – 20 per cent or 30 per cent, for example – would result in similar improvements.

"We need to give nutritionists solid recommendations they can use on the farm, so I'm following up to see if we can refine the recommendation," Huber explains. "Also, in the previous study, we didn't follow the gilts into lactation, so we are following up now to see if they actually produce more milk as well."

Farmer's original research used soybean meal as a lysine source, so Huber has added a side project to investigate whether it is the lysine itself or something about the soybean meal that caused the improvement in mammary development.

Novel ingredients

The fourth pillar of Huber's research is a more general evaluation of novel feed ingredients and their suitability for use in swine diets. As new ingredients become available, research is needed to gauge whether pigs can use them efficiently for growth, or whether there might be effects on health or reproduction.

A large project currently underway is looking at whether including small amounts of yeast products in sow diets can increase passive immunity transfer to piglets through colostrum. The team began feeding sows in late gestation through to lactation and then followed their offspring from birth right through to market weight. Lab work and data analysis are now underway.

"The idea is to see if we can wake up the sow's immune system and transfer that to the piglets, and if piglets have better immunity from their mothers, the theory is they should have better lifetime performance, particularly in stressful times like weaning," she says.

New swine research facilities

The new swine facilities in Elora – owned by the Agricultural Research Institute of Ontario – are dramatically increasing the scope of research Huber can undertake. The advanced feeding system precisely controls and automates the amount and composition of the diet that the animals receive each day of a study, a task previously done by grad students.

As well, the new herd is open, meaning for future research, different genetics can be brought in through acclimatization, opening up new realms of genetics and nutrition interaction research.

"We know different genetic lines have different nutritional requirements, so we should have a good cross-section of genetics in the barn to make good recommendations and be relevant to industry," she says.

Much of her research is funded by Ontario Pork, in large part because of that practical, industry-focused approach, she adds. Huber then works to match that funding from federal, provincial and even private industry partners to maximize the reach of each project.

She also uses a multi-pronged approach to getting research into practice (GRIP), presenting results at events and conferences attended by producers and industry and encouraging her graduate students to develop information for presentation to different audiences. She also participates in podcasts, which are increasingly becoming a popular information source.

Carbon and sustainability

An area she hopes to begin exploring is assessing the environmental footprint of pork production from birth to farm gate in order to get some true data that reflects current industry realities.

"A lot of calculations for carbon emissions right now are napkin math. You can estimate relative differences, but if you start to put dollars and cents in a cap-and-trade system, you need to know for sure that your absolute values are correct, so we are hoping to try to generate some data to put real value on those," she says.

She's also looking at a project bringing together many swine researchers across Canada that will identify ways to upcycle food waste and food loss back into the pork production cycle. The goal is to recapture those nutrients instead of letting them go to landfill or into biodigesters.

"We also need to involve food science and soil science to deal with all aspects of recovering food waste, from logistics to how we use the product, how valuable pigs find it, and what the fertilization values of the resulting manure are," she adds. "We want to look at it from a whole life cycle perspective." BP

This article is provided by Livestock Research Innovation Corporation as part of LRIC's ongoing efforts to report on research, innovation, and issues affecting the Canadian livestock industry. LRIC is funded in part by the Sustainable Canadian Agricultural Partnership (Sustainable CAP), a five-year, federal-provincial-territorial initiative.

The Ontario Swine Research Centre is owned by the Government of Ontario through its agency, the Agricultural Research Institute of Ontario, and managed by the University of Guelph through the Ontario Agri-Food Innovation Alliance, a collaboration between the Government of Ontario and U of G.