Just like you enjoy a variety of foods, pig diets include a variety of crops such as barley, wheat and corn, which provide them with energy, soybeans and canola meal for protein and vitamins and minerals are also added and balanced for each stage of the pig’s growth cycle. Grains can also be ground into small particles, mixed with vitamins and minerals, and then pressed into pellets. These pellets are easily digested by piglets.
In addition to a nutritionally balanced diet, access to high quality, clean drinking water is also very important. Growing pigs can drink more than 10 litres of water per day during hot weather.
DYK: Byproducts are materials leftover from making other goods. In agriculture, processes for producing human food, like grinding wheat for flour or crushing seeds for oil, create leftover plant material that can be fed to animals and livestock instead of being wasted.
Vitamins
Pigs need the right combination of vitamins and minerals to grow and be healthy. Instead of taking a multivitamin once a day, farmers work with animal nutritionists to determine the right combination of vitamins and minerals, fibre, protein and energy, like fats and carbohydrates, to blend together for their pigs.
Pig feed formulations are very specific to the growth stage of the pig because, like us, they have different nutritional requirements at birth compared to when they’re having or feeding piglets.
Automatic feeders
Most barns are equipped with automatic feeders so when a sow is hungry, it can enter into the feeder and eat a balanced ration. Sows are fed a nutritionally-balanced ration of feed made up of vitamins, minerals and grains, such as corn and soybeans. Water is added to the mix after its dispensed, creating a porridge-like mixture or mash.
The automatic feeder scans the ear tag of each sow and provides her with the amount of feed that she needs. Automatic feeders ensure that each sow gets the right amount of feed in a day, no matter what their eating patterns are. There are water dispensers available throughout the sow pens so that anytime a sow is thirsty, they can have a drink of fresh water.
DYK? that all pigs in Canada are raised without the use of added hormones.
We asked Denise Beaulieu, an assistant professor at the University of Saskatchewan: What do pigs eat?
Source: Canadian Food Focus, Sask Pork and FarmFood360