“As long as diets are balanced, wheat can replace all or part of the corn in swine diets without affecting growth performance,” Tokach said.
Tokach noted that the concentration of starch and fiber in wheat is similar to corn, though wheat contains significantly less oil and thus is lower in energy content (91% to 97% relative to corn, according to industry research).
But wheat does offer greater values for crude protein, phosphorus and amino acid content, particularly lysine, threonine and tryptophan; and the ileal digestibility of the amino acids is “relatively high and similar to that in corn,” according to Tokach.
“Because wheat is lower energy than corn, feed efficiency will be a little worse with wheat unless fat is added to balance the diets for energy,” Tokach said. “But even with the change in feed efficiency, wheat is economical at the current time.”
He added: “When wheat is used, less soybean meal and more feed-grade lysine can be used in the diet, which also favors the economics for wheat. These advantages will lower the feed cost per pig if wheat is used at the current time.”
Changing prices for commodities will naturally affect the current opportunity for feeding wheat, Tokach said.
Source : k-state.edu