Research conducted by the University of Saskatchewan and the Prairie Swine Center show while producers can include rye in the rations of grower pigs, it’s essential to maintain high energy levels in the ration.  
The feeding trials used a new high-yielding hybrid variety of rye developed in Germany, less susceptible to ergot. 
Dr. Denise Beaulieu, an Assistant Professor with the University of Saskatchewan, said when pigs receive high fibre rations that are slightly energy deficient, they’ll consume more feed to compensate, but that doesn’t appear to happen when rye is part of that diet.  
Some pigs weighed about 60 kilograms that went to market weight, about 130 kilograms that received diet formulations with high and low energy, and these were typical diets, but some just had a little bit more energy than others.  
A corn-based diet or a wheat-barley-based diet and then to each of those diets included 40 percent rye.  
“We found that, with the high energy diet, the pigs did just fine with the inclusion of 40 percent rye. No difference in growth or feed intake, body weight or carcass composition, but with the low energy diet without rye, with the wheat high low energy diet the pigs, did just fine, but ate more.” 
She said two or three other studies showed that pigs fed diets with up to 40 to 50 percent rye did well. But some work a couple of years ago showed that those with high rye didn’t do quite as well when the diets contained a little bit less energy. 
The critical factor for producers is the pigs will do fine with 40 to 50 percent rye in the diet, but the diets need the formulation to maintain this higher energy composition. 
Dr. Beaulieu said the next goal would be to determine why the pigs fed high rye and low energy rations didn’t increase their feed intake. •
— By Harry Siemens