Impact of particle size reduction on feed cost and feed efficiency1

摘要

'Financial support for this research was provided by the National Pork Board (Des Moines, IA). Appreciation is also extended to Pioneer Hi-Bred (Johnston, 1A) for donation of the corn grain used in these experiments and for grinding the grain to the specified particle sizes.Processing of feed ingredients or diets may increase nutrient digestibility (Hancock and Behnke, 2001; NRC, 2012). One of the main purposes of grinding of feed ingredients is to reduce the particle size, which may increase nutrient digestibility (Fastinger and Mahan, 2003) and increase growth performance. Thus, grinding is used to increase the nutritional value of ingredients. It has been reported that pigs or sows fed corn ground to a fine particle had a greater energy, DM, and N digestibility than pigs or sows fed corn ground to a coarser particle size corn size (Healy et al., 1994; Wondra et al., 1995a-d). Reduction of particle size is accomplished with the use of different types of mills. The most common mills used in the industry are roller millsand hammer mills.