Particle size

Particle size is important for digestibility of nutrients and energy and for growth performance of nursery pigs (Rojas and Stein, 2017). In meal diets, a reduction in grain particle size to approximately 600 microns improves digestibility of nursery diet and growth performance of nursery pigs. However, grinding grains below 500 microns affects feed flowability and palatability (De Jong et al., 2014; Gebhardt et al., 2018). The fine grinding of grains reduces feed intake with no improvement in feed efficiency, thereby affecting growth performance of nursery pigs (De Jong et al., 2014; Bertol et al., 2017; Gebhardt et al., 2018). However, in pelleted diets, fine grinding of grains to approximately 350 microns does seem to improve growth performance of nursery pigs (De Jong et al., 2014).

Fact Sheet: Feed Processing of Nursery Diets