Dried distillers grains with solubles are the co-products of ethanol production.

Corn distillers grain is higher in energy than wheat distillers grain because of the higher fat content of corn but wheat is higher in digestible amino acids.

Neil Campbell, a partner with Gowans Feed Consulting, notes both corn distillers and wheat distillers are available in western Canada and offer significant savings on feed costs.

Neil Campbell-Gowans Feed Consulting

Over the last three years we've seen a huge increase in the availability of competitively priced distillers grains and we have been saving anywhere in the range of 50 cents to five dollars a pig in some regions of Canada depending on the time of year.

I think the regions of Canada that have the biggest saving opportunities are the ones that are closest to the ethanol plants.

For example in Manitoba the pig industry is in very close proximity to ethanol plants in North Dakota and South Dakota.

In east central Alberta and west central Saskatchewan there's pig farmers there that are very close to some of the larger prairie ethanol plants and they can access that product very cost competitively against ingredients and grains that they're buying locally.

Then even in Quebec and BC those markets are very grain deficient.

They have the opportunity to bring in corn distillers from the US and replace corn imports and other grain imports that they would normally feed.

Those have been coming in on rail and saving those producers significant money in those markets as well.

Mr Campbell says, as more grain is used to produce more fuel, there will be increasing amounts of distillers grains available at prices that offer attractive feed cost savings.

He suggests to maintain pork production cost competitiveness swine producers will have to continue to find ways to incorporate DDGS and other co-products into their feeding programmes.