The opportunity for prairie-grown dry peas to make inroads in livestock rations is hampered by the fact that Europeans know more about the crop than Canadians, says a prominent feed consultant.
“I’m excited about peas,” Jim Gowans of Gowans Consulting told a recent Saskatoon symposium on pulse potential.
Last year, rations he devised for pigs using peas lowered costs by about $4 per tonne of feed or about $3 per pig compared to soy meal-based diets.
While his experience might show a financial benefit, not enough is known about the effect of peas in a ration to dispel the sense among livestock producers and feed consultants that fully embracing pea-based rations is risky.
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Despite this uncertainty, pea use in livestock feed in Canada has increased, growing from 400,000 tonnes in 1994-95 to a forecast of 1.02 million tonnes this crop year. But Canada will produce slightly more than three million tonnes of the crop this year so there is room for more domestic use.
To do that, peas will have to make inroads against soy meal, which is still the norm in pig diets, by proving that their product is superior. For that, more research is needed.
“The Dutch know more about our ingredients than we do,” Gowans said.
One way to increase peas’ profile would be to convince the feed industry of the validity of the net energy system in measuring the energy value of feed.
In North America, the energy value is usually based on digestible energy, which is the gross energy of the feed minus what is lost though feces. Metabolized energy systems measure gross energy minus that lost through feces and through urine and gas production.
Net energy accounts for losses in feces, urine, gas and heat and is considered a superior predictor of feed conversion efficiency and other aspects of animal performance than digestible energy or metabolized energy.
According to European research, peas shine when considered in the context of net energy formulated rations, but Gowans believes the research needs to be confirmed in North America.
As if to confirm the Dutch lead in research, Henk Entine of the Schothorst Feed Research Centre in the Netherlands reported on research that showed peas in broiler chicken and laying hen diets improved feed conversion ratios and litter quality, leading to cleaner eggs.
The feed conversion benefit was linked to the high level of slowly digestible starch fraction in peas. The starch source increased the amino acid level and led to more glucose in the lower digestion tract.
When using peas in pig rations, the Dutch researchers found that feeding raw peas in mash diets slowed growth rates and feed conversion but those measurements improved if the peas were processed into pellets and increased further if the peas were also toasted.
