Enhancing the Nutritive Value of Corn Whole Stillage for Pigs via Pretreatment and Predigestion

Corn DDGS is poorly digested by pigs. Pretreatment or predigestion of whole stillage (WS; slurry material from which DDGS is derived) can potentially improve corn DDGS digestibility. Thus, a study was conducted to determine the effects of pretreating WS with heat (160 degrees C and 70 psi for 20 min) alone or in combination with citric acid (10 g/L; CA), sulfuric acid (90 mM; H2SO4), or ammonia (1%), without or with subsequent multienzymatic hydrolysis for 24 h, on porcine digestibility. Dried untreated, heat-pretreated, CA-pretreated, H2SO4-pretreated, and ammonia-pretreated WS contained 23, 21, 12 19, and 18% total nonstarch polysaccharides, respectively. Pretreatment increased in vitro digestibility of dry matter of WS by similar to 11 (CA) to similar to 15% units (ammonia). Multienzyme hydrolysis increased in vitro digestibility of dry matter of WS by similar to 6 (ammonia-treated WS) to similar to 18% units (untreated WS). Thus, pretreatment or predigestion can improve the digestibility of WS and hence the resulting DDGS.