Corn In, Meat Out

Every corn seed company offers a few pages of hybrids for silage.  They have done the testing and know how the hybrids rank for whole plant digestibility, milk or beef per acre, etc, on their silage line up for ruminants.  But how many have results for digestible energy of the grain for monogastrics?

Pioneer has ranked their entire North American lineup for the Pork and Poultry market by developing and testing for HAE products (High Available Energy).


Not all kernels of corn are the same. Below is a graph of a sample of different hybrids and their digestibility.


There can be a spread of as much as 6% in the digestible energy between two different hybrids.  Think of that in the difference of feed that you need to put in front of the animal to satisfy their caloric intake.

So other than a large scale feeding trial, how do we know what the better hybrid is?  After years of research with feeding trials and calibration, Pioneer has developed a quick 50 second test using Near Infrared Transmittance (NIRT) to determine the digestible energy in a hybrid sample.  The result is a list of Pioneer's HAE products.  Here is a link to that list:

 https://www.pioneer.com/CMRoot/Pioneer/US/products/corn/end_use/state_pdfs/NAS_HAE_2011.pdf

As a pork or poultry producer, you now have one more tool in the toolbox to select the best hybrid for your operation.  You still need to balance the agronomics (GIB tolerance, yield, etc) with energy output but the HAE products from Pioneer keep you an extra step ahead.

For more information on the HAE products and testing, here is a link to Pioneer's website:

 https://www.pioneer.com/home/site/ca/products/end-use/hae