Better feed key to bigger market share

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Published: December 12, 2002

Researchers at the University of Saskatchewan are working on improving

prairie-grown feed crops to make them more valuable in world markets.

Murray Drew, from the department of animal and poultry science, told a

seminar at Canadian Western Agribition that most feeds are based on

ingredients grown in the United States.

“This is a corn-soy world,” he said. “How can we compete with Iowa?”

One answer lies in developing better feed varieties.

For example, cattle would more easily digest high-fat, low-lignin oats.

Read Also

thumb emoji

Supreme Court gives thumbs-up emoji case the thumbs down

Saskatchewan farmer wanted to appeal the court decision that a thumbs-up emoji served as a signature to a grain delivery contract.

High-energy, low-soluble fibre barley could be used to feed hogs and

poultry.

Drew said researchers must also develop processing methods that will

improve the nutritional value of crops like flax. That would offer more

benefits in the long term.

Saskatchewan controls 40 percent of the international trade in flax, he

said.

Using it as a replacement for fish meal in salmon feed could boost that

even more.

Fish meal and oil are in short supply and are predicted to become more

scarce because of El Nino’s effects on the fish population. Together,

those two ingredients make up about 64 percent of aquaculture feed.

“They’re using more fish meal from garbage fish than they’re producing

in salmon,” Drew said.

Flax contains the omega-3 fatty acids that salmon and trout require.

But it also contains some things that fish don’t like, such as mucilage

or soluble fibre.

These are found mainly in the hull and can be removed through hot water

extraction, but Drew said researchers don’t want to add water to the

flax.

“As long as we heat treat the flax, we can destroy these compounds,” he

said.

Extrusion is one way to use heat.

Oleet Processing at Regina uses this process to combine flax and peas

to produce its feed, LinPro.

Drew said this product would need further processing to make it work

for fish. He said another 18 months of feeding trials at a fish farm

near Calgary could lead to commercial flax de-hulling and a value-added

product.

About the author

Karen Briere

Karen Briere

Karen Briere grew up in Canora, Sask. where her family had a grain and cattle operation. She has a degree in journalism from the University of Regina and has spent more than 30 years covering agriculture from the Western Producer’s Regina bureau.

explore

Stories from our other publications