Winter wheat may provide producers with a cereal for their rotations that has profitable regional markets in the pig and poultry industries.
While barley is often seen as a cereal with local cash crop advantages, it doesn’t meet the energy requirements of monogastric animals such as pigs.
“Pigs need protein, energy and fibre in a certain balance and most hulled barleys don’t cut it,” said Vern Racz of the Prairie Feed Resource Centre in Saskatoon.
In hog rations, barley’s digestible energy component, based on 90 percent dry matter, averages 3,140 kilocalories per kilogram while winter wheat is about 3,500 Kcal, giving the wheat a 10 percent energy advantage over barley.
Read Also
VIDEO: Green Lightning and Nytro Ag win sustainability innovation award
Nytro Ag Corp and Green Lightning recieved an innovation award at Ag in Motion 2025 for the Green Lightning Nitrogen Machine, which converts atmospheric nitrogen into a plant-usable form.
In ruminants, the total digestible nutrients are about 79 percent for winter wheat and 74 percent for barley.
However, winter wheat has a production and feeding edge unrelated to nutritional concerns.
Most feed grain is the unfortunate byproduct of a crop grown with higher marketing expectations in mind.
Whether it is wheat damaged by frost or disease, or malting barley hurt by high protein or staining, most feed grain is generally uneven in development and may be undesirable as feed.
Mills place a lot of value on predictable, high quality kernels, which generally guarantee feeding results.
If harvested early in the fall, winter cereals tend to offer even and predictable processing characteristics that can translate into feed grain premiums for producers.
Bob Linnell of Winter Cereals Canada said early harvest is key to the quality.
“Any time you send the combine out in August instead of September you are vastly improving your chances of putting No. 1 grain in the bin,” he said.
Racz said fusarium, which can ruin grain as a livestock feed, isn’t generally an issue for winter cereals because of August weather patterns.
Even if the crop is infested with fusarium head blight, the micotoxin isn’t produced under normal August weather conditions.
Potential yields above 65 bushels per acre on dryland and more than 100 for irrigation make winter wheat attractive when competing with American corn. Corn harvested in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, is a good substitute for wheat in most mongastrics’ feeding systems and can be shipped to Saskatoon or Lethbridge for $133 per tonne.
Corn provides similar energy per kg to winter wheat in both monogastrics and ruminants.
A strong Canadian dollar is also improving American corn’s chances to be selected as a feed in Canadian barns.
Racz said transportation costs start eating into producer returns if feed grain is shipped from one side of the Prairies to the other, “say from Saskatoon, Brandon or northern Alberta to southern Alberta.”
Feed grain producers are better off if they can grow a crop closer to their customers, he added.
Back-to-back record corn and soybean crops in the United States have lowered feed prices in Western Canada, giving livestock producers a wider choice of quality feed supplies, but Racz said winter wheat and hulless barley should be able to compete well with corn and still provide “somewhat limited but likely viable margins as long as you don’t have to ship them long distances.”
Lysine and triptophan levels are also one-third higher in winter wheat and barley than in corn, reducing the need for expensive feed supplements.
