South Dakota State University and CBS America partner on swine research

A new partnership between South Dakota State University and feed science company CBS America aims to drive innovation for the future of pig farming.

The three-year alliance, which builds on a previous five-year relationship, will focus on sustainable and profitable pork production. The main emphasis will be nutrition and feed technology interventions.

According to the announcement, the relationship has high collaborative potential now that CBS has its American headquarters and a distribution hub eight miles from the SDSU campus.

The previous CBS-SDSU partnership focused on studying novel opportunities to increase value from feedstuffs, including an emphasis on the grower-finish phase of production. This will expand in the next three-year phase with a stronger focus on sows and nursery pigs.

“We have seen a growing recognition of the primary importance of the sow as the foundation of pig production,” said Crystal Levesque, associate professor of swine nutrition at SDSU. “The more we can support the sow, utilizing nutrition and feed technology approaches, the more we can optimize the value of the piglets she produces.

“Our industry has also learned a lot more about the importance of providing optimum support through these approaches to young animals, particularly in the first few weeks of life. This maximizes health, performance, efficiency and overall production value carrying through over all phases of production.”

The research focus will also include developing technology that unlocks more value and benefits from feed, including byproducts that otherwise would not be useful as swine feed, Levesque said. “We see a lot of potential value in finding new ways to add novel feedstuffs to the nutritional toolbox.”