Why Hi-Gel™ Corn?
There are several varieties of corn with different colors. In this blog, I will be presenting an overview of how you can improve digestibility in your animals which increases their performance and can reduce your diet cost. As Dr. Albin discussed in previous blogs, corn is a major source of energy for the livestock and poultry diets, so it is important for operations to get the most nutrients they can from their feed.
The best known and most widely consumed by livestock and poultry is the yellow corn variety. Raw ground corn, when fed to baby pigs or young chicks, can remain undigested and harden into a solid mass that may cause health-related issues. To improve the digestibility of corn, it must be extruded.
Driven by customer demand, Insta-Pro has developed a processing solution for extruding corn. Extruding corn is difficult to do properly because of its high starch and low oil content. Typically corn contains 70-75% starch, 8-10% protein and 4-5% oil. To solve this issue, we have developed a specialized corn extruder featuring a processing chamber with a shorter barrel.
When extruding corn, the high temperatures and pressure cause the corn to gelatinize, making the corn come out of the extruder barrel in a rope-like form. A cutter head at the end of the barrel breaks up the product into corn chips. Hi-Gel™ Corn has 18% more Metabolized Energy compared to raw ground corn.
When corn is extruded, there is more nutrient energy available for the animals to use. Hi-Gel™ Corn has 94.7% gelatinization compared to raw corn with 24.6% gelatinization. Starch gelatinization is important because it allows improved activity of starch degrading enzymes like Amylase and Glucosidases.
Depending on the price of corn, Hi-Gel™ Corn can be used up to make up 70% of the animals’ diet.
To learn more about Hi-Gel™ Corn Technology, please contact us and/or schedule a video meeting or phone call.
