Governments of Canada and Manitoba announce new herd management program under AgriRecovery framework

Dec 03, 2021

Winnipeg, Manitoba – Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada - The Canada and Manitoba governments continue to support producers impacted by drought by announcing a Herd Management Drought Assistance program under the AgriRecovery framework. The program will help livestock producers offset the costs associated with replacing breeding animals culled due to shortages of winter feed, federal Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau and Manitoba Agriculture and Resource Development Minister Ralph Eichler announced today.

Eligible animals under the Herd Management Drought Assistance program include breeding females of beef cattle, bison, sheep, goats and elk. Producers must be supporting a minimum of 10 animals to qualify for assistance.

This program will assist producers who must replace breeding females culled due to drought, helping to return the inventory of breeding females to pre-drought levels. The replacement animals can be purchased or retained from the producer’s existing herds or flocks. Payments are determined by the increase in the inventory of breeding females, with payments capped once inventories are restored to pre-drought levels.

Application is a two-step process, which starts with producers submitting their pre-drought, and drought affected inventories of breeding females. Forms for submitting these breeding animal numbers will be available in January 2022. Starting on December 1, 2022, producers will be able to submit information on their breeding animal inventories post-drought. Payments will be issued after the post-drought inventory is submitted.

Source : canada

Video: US Soy: Pig growth is impaired by soybean meal displacement in the diet

Eric van Heugten, PhD, professor and swine extension specialist at North Carolina State University, recently spoke at the Iowa Swine Day Pre-Conference Symposium, titled Soybean Meal 360°: Expanding our horizons through discoveries and field-proven feeding strategies for improving pork production. The event was sponsored by Iowa State University and U.S. Soy.

Soybean meal offers pig producers a high-value proposition. It’s a high-quality protein source, providing essential and non-essential amino acids to the pig that are highly digestible and palatable. Studies now show that soybean meal provides higher net energy than current National Research Council (NRC) requirements. Plus, soybean meal offers health benefits such as isoflavones and antioxidants as well as benefits with respiratory diseases such as porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS).

One of several ingredients that compete with the inclusion of soybean meal in pig diets is dried distillers grains with solubles (DDGS).

“With DDGS, we typically see more variable responses because of the quality differences depending on which plant it comes from,” said Dr. van Heugten. “At very high levels, we often see a reduction in performance especially with feed intake which can have negative consequences on pig performance, especially in the summer months when feed intake is already low and gaining weight is at a premium to get them to market.”

Over the last few decades, the industry has also seen the increased inclusion of crystalline amino acids in pig diets.

“We started with lysine at about 3 lbs. per ton in the diet, and then we added methionine and threonine to go to 6 to 8 lbs. per ton,” he said. “Now we have tryptophan, isoleucine and valine and can go to 12 to 15 lbs. per ton. All of these, when price competitive, are formulated into the diet and are displacing soybean meal which also removes the potential health benefits that soybean meal provides.”