Feeding hybrid rye on a self-sustaining swine farm

Upland Colony has seen good results from feeding hybrid rye

By Carly Rundle and Becca Brattain

With recent changes in environmental conditions across southeastern South Dakota, farmers in the area are looking for a crop that can thrive in extreme climates. Winter-hardiness, drought resistance, and disease tolerance rank as some of the top characteristics they look for in a crop, and what they found was hybrid rye. Hybrid rye is a fall-planted winter cereal that is harvested in mid-summer. Bred for its high yields, ergot resistance, and standability, hybrid rye produces high quality grain and greater yields compared with conventional rye varieties. Pairing that with the fact that this is a low input crop, needing 20% less water than winter wheat, it is a perfect fit for the region. Upland Colony is one such farm that recently found hybrid rye. Located in Artesian, South Dakota, they have developed an interest in diversifying their crop rotation to improve soil health and increase annual crop yields. Upland Colony is one of many Hutterite colonies in the area and they focus on a holistic farming, raising livestock, producing manufactured goods, and striving to be as self-sufficient as possible. Ken Wurtz, the farm manager at Upland Colony, has been planting hybrid rye for a few years now and says, “I’m impressed by its ability to suppress weeds, its drought tolerance, its low fertilizer requirements, and disease tolerance”. Given the ease they had in growing hybrid rye, Ken’s next mission was to find out how best to use it.

The natural option was to sell to the distilling market. However, when faced with an on-farm corn shortage in 2022, he and Cornelius Wurtz, the hog manager at Upland Colony, became very interested in the opportunity to incorporate hybrid rye into their swine diets. Previous research conducted at the University of Illinois concluded that the crude protein in hybrid rye grain ranges from 8 to 12%, with 0.25 g/kg digestible lysine, the total dietary fiber content is around 18%, and the metabolizable energy content is estimated to be 3,150 kcal/kg when fed to growing pigs. Additional work by the University of Illinois and South Dakota State University has shown that altogether, hybrid rye has an attractive nutrient profile that fits extremely well in all stages of swine diets. Upon hearing these results, interest at Upland Colony grew and they started developing a plan to get further use out of their rye beyond selling it to the distilling market. In collaboration with their swine nutritionist, and with support from the research team at SDSU, they developed a plan to begin incorporating hybrid rye into their sow diets.

After careful consideration they decided to start in early September of 2022 with gestating and lactating sow diets at a hybrid rye inclusion level of 20%. They wanted to better understand how to process and handle this new feedstuff and get a clearer idea on how their hogs consumed and performed with hybrid rye in their diets. When asked how the sows were performing with hybrid rye in the diet, Cornelius was quick to brag “[Hybrid rye] is as good as or better than corn. They eat it well, it digests well, and we are weaning some heavy pigs”. Compared with feeding sows a standard diet, adding hybrid rye did not influence feed intake – with sows fed with and without hybrid rye reaching their optimal targeted feed intake. After the success of incorporating hybrid rye into sow diets they were excited to see just what else hybrid rye could do. As a next step they began introducing hybrid rye into nursery diets – starting with 5% in the diet and continuing with 7% hybrid rye in the diet after the first week. To test it out, Cornelius set up their nursery barns so that one barn was fed a traditional corn-based diet that did not contain hybrid rye and the other barn was fed a diet with 5% hybrid rye in phase 1 and then stepped up to 7% in the remainder of the nursery period. The nursery pigs that were fed hybrid rye had a feed:gain ratio of 1.32, whereas pigs that were not fed hybrid rye had a feed:gain of 1.56, indicating that feeding hybrid rye is more efficient than feeding a diet without it. Based on these results, Ken and Cornelius plan to continue including hybrid rye in their swine rations and are eager to keep seeing all of the benefits that hybrid rye has to offer their farm.

Currently, feed costs make up the largest portion of a livestock producers budget. Input costs for hybrid rye are substantially lower than corn - with lower seed, fertilizer, chemicals, fuel, labor, and drying costs, the direct cost of producing hybrid rye is estimated to be around $225.25/acre compared to $498.06/acre producing corn based on averages in the Midwest region of the United States (Table 1). Even though hybrid rye has slightly less metabolizable energy concentration than corn, the cost per 1000 Mcal of energy is $5.15 less when feeding hybrid rye than with corn. This means that ultimately the producer is spending less for the same amount of energy used by the pig. In a time when feed costs are high and hog margins are low, replacing corn with hybrid rye may be a solution to consider for an integrated farm to maximize profits.

The benefits can be seen from the time of sowing the seed to bringing the pigs to market. With improvements in feed efficiency observed in the sow barns and the nursery, Upland Colony has had great success incorporating hybrid rye into their swine diets and say that they are looking forward to continuing this practice for years to come.