It's time for a new era of communication in the swine industry one that you can get the latest updates while commuting or driving Farms here. You have the brightest minds of the global swine industry in your pocket. Yeah, that's that's one thing that's different today than it was 30 or 40 years ago is that used to be we would send a paper copy of the formula to the feed mill. And there was a guy at the feedmill usually one of the more experienced guys that would enter that new formula and if he saw something different he would call you and ask about it it and and that was a good thing and I want to tell you that if someone calls you and questions a formula, even if there's nothing wrong with it, you should thank them profusely. Welcome to swine it podcast. My name is Marcia gonsalves your host for today's episode. Yeah. Thanks very much for your time. You bet. Yep. Yeah, so Wayne there is a you know, a lot of everyone knows you in the US and North America. I want you to give us a little bit of your history. Yeah, just like how did you end up in swine nutrition and tell us What you do? Well, I grew up on a pig farm. My father was a good hug man in my earliest recollection as a child is coming out waking up in the morning and coming out in the kitchen and father warming up a box full of baby pigs by the stove, you know, they board cold Nebraska night and you brought in to warm up so and Yeah, then so I attended the University of Nebraska back in those days, you know, you didn't I didn't I didn't know you were supposed to think about different colleges. I just went to the one that was close and And so then as a university student, I work part-time at the pig farm the genetics and reproductive physiology research Farm. What I do today is I work I have six customers. I formulate diets for and and and help them with their nutrition and they're really nice people. And one thing I like about them is that they are they are they are people that have done every job on the farm, you know, they and so they have some compassion and appreciation for the Pig and the people taking care of the pig. Oh, I work and I work part-time for pi C and that's been there's been some real. Positive parts to that weasely Orlando that I get to work with. He has experience from a whole nother continent, you know that and that I don't have and he has some really good computer skills that I don't have and modeling skills. So that's been good for me. Yeah to have access to those tools very nice. They used to have a young guy that worked there also from Brazil that I enjoyed work. Yeah, wait for those. There are not trying to Tricia nist. Can you explain watered? What are the neutral Holdings? Okay. So a pig has nutrient needs vitamins trace minerals amino acids energy calcium and phosphorus sodium and those needs are different for the different phases of its life whether it's gestation or lactation or Nursery or girl finish and so we try to meet those needs. Nutrient needs and so on one side of the formulas is the nutrients that this Pig needs and then we look at our ingredients to figure out what is the best way to meet those nutrient needs and we use a computer formulation to do that. And and the key to that is having the nutrients correct on those ingredients because that computer doesn't know what's right or wrong. It's trying to help. You figure out the best way to meet those nutrient needs. And so if you've got a incorrect loading on one of your ingredients, it doesn't know that and so it's going to formulate the diet, you know, and and the diet may not be correct. I guess I can tell you a couple stories about where I've helped other nutritionists figure out what what a nutrient loading. No problem. It in and what and what they had a problem. They didn't know it was nutrient loadings until I helped him figure it out. I can tell you a couple stories like that. Okay, so there's a guy doing some diets for company and in Pennsylvania, and he was having a lot of broken bones. And if you looked at his formula, you know, the calcium and phosphorus looked right, but I took his formula and I took the pounds of each ingredient. And and formulated the diet with the same pounds of ingredients and I wasn't finding near as much calcium as his as he was and so then we went through it ingredient by ingredient and looked out the calcium loadings on that ingredient and he had a bad number on his wheat meds, and he thought there was a lot of calcium in there. And so I said, we'll check your your quality control in your analysis and there wasn't that much calcium. In there so that that created the problem. So he had a newt yet a nutrient loading on an ingredient that cause the broken bones because there wasn't as much calcium as he thought the quality control side when I know there's different philosophies like okay, should I monitor the incoming ingredients but also the Finnish complete diet what what's your take on that? And then we can jump into the next few experiences next story? Yeah, okay. Okay, I think you need to watch both. Okay, so you need to watch your incoming ingredients because that's what your nutrient loading is come from. But you also got to watch your finish feed because the Finish feed will give you a clue how good a job you're doing on your ingredients, but it's also going to help you figure out if you've got a see how good the meal is at putting those ingredients in and then there's a third part of it. I think that most people underutilize and that's your feed mill accounting. For example, let's say I'm monitoring my ingredients for fat and then and and I'm also monitoring my complete feeds for a fat level. Well, let's say both of those are running low. Well, is that because I've got something wrong on my ingredient loadings or is that because the feed mill has a problem with their their metering device or and so I look at my ingredients. I have the guy at the feed mill check recalibrate he's meters but the third thing that I do is I talk to feed mill County. They look at how many tons of feed we made how many tons of fat we should be using and and if we're not using that many tons of fat it tells us that helps confirm. We need to look at are metering device. So I think feed mill accounting is that it doesn't get utilized as much as it should yeah makes sense. That makes sense. So what else has it seen as far as the neutral Holdings and problems in the field. There was no art large system in Illinois and their feet of fish girl finished feed efficiency had gone gotten worse. And if the guy felt that he really hadn't changed. Anything and so I said send me one of your diets and I recall I took his pounds of each ingredient and I put him in there and I said, what do you think your threonine ratio is and he said, you know, whatever. The right number is 62 or something and I said, well, I'm not finding near that much and so he had given he hit one change he had made he had gone through and given his thigh taste some nutrient releases and there's Wrong with doing that except he'd made a math error on his three inning. So he was feeding a lot lower three inning ratio than he thought he was and then I had a guy up in Iowa whose growth had gone down and and he couldn't figure out why and so I look I took his diets and reconstructed to him and and I wasn't finding near enough tryptophan. And so then we dug into each one of these. His ingredients and we found out he had a artificially high tryptophane value on Bakery meal, you know, so yeah it see it. It has it happens. You know, when sometimes we have a minimum when that energy level of the diet and we don't have a fat or oil available in the dialogue. Oh, oh, yeah, and then yeah and then it will fill with an ingredient like Matheny nor something. Yes. Yeah, that's That's one thing that's different today than it was 30 or 40 years ago is that used to be we would send a paper copy of the formula to the feed mill and there was a guy at the feedmill usually one of the more experienced guys that would enter that new formula and if he saw something different he would call you and ask about it. It and and that was a good thing and I want to tell you that if someone calls you and questions a formula, even if there's nothing wrong with it, you should thank them profusely because they are you know, you might be the only guy looking at that formula if that guy isn't and to end today that's kind of a problem because there isn't this old guy at the feed mill looking at the formula it all gets transferred. Chronically, and so maybe nobody looks at that and a lot of people to be looking at it. And so even if there's nothing wrong with the formula you thank him for looking at it because you want them to be looking at it because it'll it's your last line of defense. You know, it's your safety net. You got to be and he thanked them and that's the other reason you go to the feed mills is so those guys can put a face with the name and they're not intimidated. To call you, you know, they know you they know that you don't have horns and a tail and and that you want to do what's right. So now that's a great advice. I like that. Oh Wayne, what a great practice is to have good neutral oldies. Well, what do you do to ensure? You know, you minimize any chances of error y-yeah to minimize air. Well youyou got to be And and try to do it when you're not taught, you know, and you're updating ingredients you try to do it when you're not tired. I tried to do it when it first thing in the morning when your mind is about as good as it's going to be and I try to do it so early in the morning that you're not going to get any phone calls and interruptions. And then the other thing that I would encourage you to do Marcio is is Take get network. And so you go to a you have another neutral another nutritionist. That's your friend or an acquaintance and yet and you say I'm going to take this many pounds of corn this many bad diet soybean meal and and tell me what you get for a lysine level. What do you get for calcium phosphorus level and and another one to kind of check. Your ratios amino acid ratios, you can take a diet and say okay. How many were both going to pick a 1% lysine diet? For example, how many pounds of Crystal and lysine? Can you use before another amino acid becomes limiting? And then what is that amino acid? Right and then how many pounds of that next amino acid comes in before the third limiting amino acid is there and you can kind of check your ratios, you know? So like when you did your work at K-State, your loadings on ingredients were a little different than mine. And your 20% on tryptophane was more like my 19% on trip, you know and things like that, but I think you got to you got to have a friend you got to call a friend or acquaintance and and it's mutually beneficial it helps you and it can help them too because I do that a lot and sometimes we find something. That's Goofy on my And sometimes we find something Goofy on their hand and so it's mutually beneficial. Right? Well one thing that came to mind when is you know, young the fishing is like myself and others, you know getting today industry. What would be your recommendation for say did the first couple of steps? Okay, you know first day on the job. You know, how do we take over from the transloading standpoint guy? And I'd say this is true for not just a A young nutritionist but an old nutrition is to that goes into a new. A new situation. So like when I went to premium standard Farms, I didn't start changing diets the first damn thing. I started looking at the nutrient loadings for ingredients because that's what drives it that computer doesn't know anything. It just knows what you give it and an example of something that happened there. I had never been anywhere or corn gluten feed was a good buy for The Great by it's a great ingredient, but it's usually the cattle guys scoop it up and it's worth more to them and but corn gluten feed was coming into these diets. And so the supplier was ADM a good quality company and I visited with her nutritionist and we went through the nutrient loading zone that ingredient and he and the previous nutritionists had what a very Optimistic very very optimistic energy value on that ingredient. I don't know if it was an error or you know entry error or a I don't know what he was thinking about. But so let's I change that then porn gluten feed was not a goodbye anymore makes sense your ingredients. And first, I think the first thing you do in a new setting so Do you how do you do that? Well, you can look at NRC. You can call a friend you can yeah. You got options? Yeah, and then another thing I think a person should try to do on his nutrient loadings is to like on his V TM or is vitamins and trace minerals and on his drugs or any other additive. Probably he needs to spend some time understanding how much calcium is coming from those ingredients because their calcium lime stone is a common carrier and so you'll end up with more calcium than you probably need or Not if you don't pay attention, I and everybody says well the inclusion rate of those very big but you start adding them all together and it and it becomes the inclusion rate becomes high and then on some of these drugs like I remember I was reviewing some diets for a company and man. I was coming up with way more calcium in this last Nursery diet than they were and they were using Nia terramycin which is a fine. Drug, but your inclusion rate of that product was like 40 pounds per ton and they weren't accounting for the Limestone that was in there the carrier and the interesting part of that story. I think Marcio is that they called me or month or two later and said there there Pig their exit weights of their nurseries had gone up and they really engage ATL so that excess calcium was hurting them and I think some of my Han Stein's recent work out of unit, Illinois would confirm that Too much calcium can hurt performance right make sense whatwhat have you seen lately that that might concern you or or you're thinking about yeah. I saw some diets from Brazil and in their corn soy diets predominately and you're very familiar with him, but they were adding choline to those diets and there's and I don't think it's hurting the big performance at all, but I would I would Be surprised right if you have a need for choline a girl finish Pig would need to have a need for choline and a corn soy diet. And I think Marcy. Oh you did a study with that showed that they did. They didn't need it. Right? Yeah, we do. Maybe we could talk about consistent and Radiance versus variable ingredients we should reward consistent ingredients and one way to reward them or make them more attractive. Is that on your variable ingredients because you don't know that nutrients going to be in there all the time that you could use your average - of half a standard deviation or something to make sure you have the right amount of nutrient in there all the time. I think that's a pretty good practice. That makes sense. Well, one thing I was going to ask you was on the you know, monocalcium phosphate and die calcium phosphate some areas that I've experienced some areas of the West and also Canada, you know, you know some people just call like alright. So for us, I guess it's good to always ask for the label right something I learned with you with you as well. Yeah, ask for the label and I think feed mill today probably uses less feed phosphate. In a month, then they used to use in a week. And so you think about that feed mill and those augers that are that are putting that into our ton of feed their they are way too large and to put in these small amounts. And so those are there some things there's some advantage to going to a feed mill and sitting down next to the guy batch in the feed and just watching what the heck's going on because and then and then then what you need to do is either slow that auger down or you can put in a smaller auger which is more expensive or you can do some things like you can cut off some of the flighting on that auger at the end. So it's less efficient and doesn't add it as fast. So you'll see that, you know, we're adding less. Yeah feed phosphate. In a diet, you know used to be you'd put in ten pounds. Well now maybe not putting in any but worse yet. We're putting in one or two pounds and can it do it accurately some people I think some people are even on the microbe in sometimes that's right. That's right, and they have space available. Very good. Um good. Anything else winded comes to mind when neutral Oles you ask any of these young nutritionist at work with have worked with me. And they will tell you that my my my I tell them every day nutrient loadings are everything, you know, this computer formulation is wonderful that those those elves in there that are doing those thousands calculations. They don't know if you're giving them bad information and and I would encourage people to compare ingredients with other nutritionists and formulation with other new Christian nutritionist where you put in pound-for-pound a match a diet and see how different the answers are and there's going to be some frustrations with that process to in that by Gary Cromwell did a study on soybean meal and he took soybean meal from five or six different plants and he sent it to five or six. Brent labs for amino acid analysis and he found out there was more difference in between the labs and there was this voice as he planned. So so there's going to be some frustrations there and you're not going to agree a hundred percent, but you want to make sure you're not way wrong like the guy with the threonine loading on his fight a sore the guy with the tryptophane loading. On his bakery or the guy with the calcium loading on his wheat meds. Yeah. I did. I did it today with no wasn't today. It was yesterday. I did it yesterday with corn and soybean meal because I was wanting wanting to make sure my isoleucine and valine values were correct. You know, I looked at NRC and then I checked with another nutritionist because NRC is very very very good, but there can be glitches in NRC to sew Yeah, yeah, you just got to you got to be a little bit anal. As far as look through all these and why you know why I think you were one of the experts on that arena is that you're probably the most interesting with Kristen is that I've met as far as interesting ingredient as well, right? So if you can share with us one of the craziest ingredients you've dealt with Well, so I got you know, I fortune cookies. I figured it fortune cookies lately. I figured peanut butter. I figured oh, yeah, tato potato chips and corn chips lately. Yeah. So I've done those candy bars Lifesavers those kind of things. Yep. Amazing M&M's and all that kind of thing. Yeah M&M's M&M's happy now. Yeah peanuts. Yeah, very good Wing, I guess as we approach the and here one, we have three questions that we are going to ask every guest every episode. And the first one is what is your favorite wine related book? Well, I don't have just one but I want to give you several that I think are really worth worth while Wilson Pond wrote a book. Swine production in temperate and topical that's not right Wilson Pawn wrote a book swine production in temperate and tropical environments. And that's a really nice book to read. Yeah, another book by factor and Kirkwood is nontraditional feed sources for use in swine production. That's an excellent. That's an excellent book too. And then I like Austin Lewis's book is actually Austin Lewis and Lead Southern's book swine nutrition that big blue book and then and then for a year, I think there's another book that I would encourage the young nutritionist in particular. Anyway, I any nutrition history is the swine nutrition guide that John patients and Prairie swine Center put out and it buddy. It's a good book for a producer to it. It is John asked me one time if I thought it was too simple, and I said no it was written right at my level. It's a good book for a lay person as well as PhD swine nutritionist new book to read. So those would be for books that I would recommend highly and what about Books unrelated to swine. Well, there's a book that I think I want you to read because I don't think I got everything out of it that I that's in there but there's a book called The Accidental superpower by Peter zahaan, and it's a real interesting book and and it's about it's about America being blessed geographically and fertile soils and a good transportation system and no enemies to the North or the south of us and how we're blessed there. And then it also Fox quite a bit about population and how that's changing. This is why do you think sets apart? Successful swine Perfection. Yeah, that's a good question. Why? I think they I think they want to have the producers best interest at heart. Sometimes you the producer will ya got that they want to do the right thing for the producer so that that guy's kids can go to college. And so that guy is successful as you as you know, how you want to do the best you can you know, because people's livelihood depends on it. So, okay. so he this probably isn't going to go on the podcast, but I'll tell you co because you're my friend, but when I church on Sunday, I pray that my wife and my children are happy healthy and productive and I pray for myself that I do a good job for my producer because they, you know, 70% of their 60 or 70 percent of their cost goes through my fingers and I know I can't control the price of corn and that but I want To be a good Steward with my producers money want to spend his money as wisely as if it were my own. Well, I think I think that last Spar should go on the podcast plane. Oh that part. Well, well it is I think in some jobs You could say well it's not that important or you know, it's not but gosh these guys are depending on you and and I take that responsibility seriously. No, that makes sense. Wait. I appreciate you sharing that. Thanks, man. Appreciate our time. Oh glad to do it Marcio. You're a fine young man. Take care. Yeah, you too. No, that makes sense. Wait. I appreciate you sharing that. Thanks, man. Appreciate our time. Oh glad to do it Marcio. You're a fine young man. Take care. Yeah, you too.
Today’s episode will cover the backbone of Swine Nutrition: Nutrient loadings. “If someone calls you and asks about one of the diets you formulated… you should thank him/her profusely” – Wayne Cast. Our guest is the man, the myth, the legend… Wayne Cast. Swine nutritionist graduated from the University of Nebraska, Wayne is one of the most interesting characters in the Global Swine Industry. His knowledge, experience, charism, stories, and ability to ask questions enchant everyone. On this episode, you will learn: ·  For those who are not swine nutritionists, what are the nutrient loadings? ·  Why are the nutrient loadings so important? ·  How can things go wrong when having incorrect nutrient loadings? ·  What are great practices to have appropriate nutrient loadings? ·  Practical challenges in diet formulation ·  How many people actually see your formula before a pig is fed? You will also learn his thoughts on what makes a successful swine professional. Here are some of the books recommended by Wayne: Swine production in temperate and tropical environments (Wilson Pond), Non-traditional feeds for use in swine production (Thacker and Kirkwood), Swine Nutrition (Lewis and Southern), Swine Nutrition Guide (Patience, Thacker), Accidental superpower (Zeihan and Audio). Enjoy this episode in all major platforms, including Spotify and Apple Podcasts. 