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Faunsdale, AL | Wayne,
I don't think it's accurate to say the hog's digestion can get more out of the corn than a cow's. When we feed a cow like a hog, then maybe the cow doesn't operate as efficiently!
It's simply a matter of rate of passage and chewing. The cow eats such large volumes and swallows whole grain which may not ever be regurgitated and chewed so the starch and germ inside are exposed to digestion. Even rumen fiber digesters have a hard time with the waxy seed coat, lower digestive tract enzymes can't do anything at all with it, whatever species it is.
A cow's rumen is a continuous flow stirred reactor (if we were describing it as an anaerobic digester, which it is) and even in the man made ones, some of the feedstock flow in leaves the reactor before it gets digested. Until you go to a batch process or a plug flow type like the lower gut is, you will always have some feedstock escape undigested because of the mixing.
When a hog gets the grain after it goes through the cow, it's been pretreated to soften the seed coat and then the hog chews it to fully expose the starch and germ to digestion. Screened/washed manure solids can also be fed back to cattle with similar results as feeding hogs behind cattle. | |
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