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By Debbie Belanger
Research is driving efforts to promote greater
use of canola meal in livestock and poultry diets.
A GREAT MEAL
FOR LIVESTOCK
et’s do the math. If Canadian
farmers are going to meet the canola
industry’s target of producing 15 million
tonnes of canola by 2015, that means
9 million tonnes of meal will need a
market. Or for achieving a Canadian
crush volume of 7.5 million tonnes,
4.5 million tonnes is meal.
That is an entirely realistic goal because
canola meal is a valuable feed ingredient.
In dairy cattle, research trials have
shown that canola meal increases milk
production by one litre of milk per cow
per day. It also has benefits for other
livestock and poultry.
The goal is to demonstrate those benefits
to the animal feed industry. And that
means conducting research.
“The large dairy operations in our key
markets – the United States and China
– rely on feed companies, nutritional
consultants and veterinarians to provide
their dairy cattle with the optimal
nutrition and feed mix,” says Les
Nernberg, Canola Meal Manager with
the Canola Council of Canada (CCC).
“So we need to make sure we are
providing these people with up-to-date
research and technical information to
make their feed ingredient purchasing
and feed formulation decisions.”
For that reason the CCC is allocating
and coordinating $4.1 million in canola
meal research over three years to
examine how to better use canola
meal in livestock and poultry diets.
The research will also demon-
strate that high energy canola
meal can be used very effectively
at high inclusion levels in swine
and poultry feeds.
The first study builds on the overall
analysis that demonstrated the one-litre-
per-cow-per-day benefit of canola meal.
The study is seeking to better explain
the statistically significant increase.
Specifically, the research is examining
the responses of dairy cattle fed canola
meal-based diets versus dairy cows fed
soybean meal, corn distillers’ grains, or
LEVERAGING RESEARCH
wheat distiller-based diets. With growth
in the ethanol industry, distillers’ grains,
the by-product of the distillation process,
are becoming increasingly used in
livestock diets and in some cases can
be complementary to canola meal.
Once the study is completed, Nernberg
hopes to provide information to key
people in the dairy industry on how
canola meal can be more accurately
formulated into dairy cow diets.
Another study is examining the effects
of using high levels of canola meal
from black napus and a yellow seed
coated variety (canola juncea)
on animal performance. The study