Nonruminant Nutrition: Feed Ingredients and Processing.

The article presents abstracts of various papers related to animal nutrition that were presented during the symposium held on July 27, 2005 in Cincinnati, Ohio, which was organized by the American Dairy Science Association, the American Society of Animal Science, and the Canadian Society of Animal Science. One of the papers discussed is "Near Infra-Red Reflectance Spectroscopy for Prediction of Amino Acids in Feed Ingredients Leads to Important Cost Savings in Diet Formulation," by J. Goodson, D. Hoehier, J. Fontaine and others. Near infrared reflectance spectroscopy calibrations used to predict amino acid levels in feed ingredients can be used to allow swine feed formulators to reduce safety margins in formulation programs. Reduction of these safety margins for amino acids allows the production of feeds which meet animal requirements for protein and amino acids without supplying excessive levels of either. Another paper discussed is "Use of Rice in Substitution of Corn in Diets for Young Pigs," by B. Vicente, D.G. Valencia, R. Lazaro and others. The authors studied the influence of feeding rice on the ileal digestibility of dry matter, organic matter, gross energy and starch and the morphology of the ileum of piglets at 37 d of age. The control diet was a complex diet without in-feed growth promoters and included 50% cooked corn.