New High Fat Oat Offers Excellent Feed Potential - CANADA - Farm-Scape: Episode 1337. Farm-Scape is a Wonderworks Canada production and is distributed courtesy of Manitoba Pork Council and Sask Pork.

Farm-Scape is sponsored by Manitoba Pork Council and Sask Pork Play Audio Farm-Scape is a Wonderworks Canada production and is distributed courtesy of Manitoba Pork Council and Sask Pork.

Farm-Scape, Episode 1337

Feeding trials conducted at the University of Saskatchewan have shown a newly developed high fat oat offers tremendous potential as a feed ingredient in swine and poultry diets.

The high fat oat, which was developed by the University's Crop Development Centre, yields similar to a normal oats but it contains a much higher energy content.

Feeding trials conducted with grower finisher pigs by the University's Animal Science Department compared the new variety with commonly grown domestic oats.

Animal Science Professor Dr. Phil Thacker says the new variety provides a much higher return of energy per acre than traditional varieties and shows excellent feed potential.

"Typically we think of oats as being a relatively high fibre, low energy feed which limits their usefulness in terms of monogastric diets because they don't digest fibre very well.

That fibre lowers the energy content of the feed so, when we compare it to barley or wheat, it's much lower in energy and therefor much less useful as an energy source for pig or poultry.

One of the simplest ways of increasing the energy content of a feed is to increase its fat content and so they developed a high fat oat and the higher lipid content compensates for the higher fibre content.

So far we've seen that, compared to regular oats, the high fat oats support much better growth rates in terms of pig production, in the neighborhood of 10 to 15 percent higher growth, better digestibility of things like the protein, the energy, the fat and it doesn't seem to have any negative effects on any of the carcass traits that we would have measured".

Dr. Thacker says the new variety is still in the trial stages so supplies are limited. He expects it to be a couple of years before the variety is available for commercial use.

For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.