Learning more about KWS hybrid rye, Ep 1

Welcome to learning more about KWS hybrid rye. From seeding to feeding to selling, let's unlock the potential on your farm. Shaun haney here with RealAgriculture.com and RealAg Radio. We're going to talk about hybrid rye and some of the opportunities that maybe some of the challenges too when it comes to the crop. Joining us right now is Laura Eastwood. She is animal nutrition manager with kws. How are we doing today, Laura? Great. Thanks for having me, Shaun. Happy to be here. You know, there's a lot of excitement around hybrid rye. I myself have, you know, back in my former career. Or you have grown the crop? Myself. There's a lot of flexibility that comes with this crop from a feed use perspective. Is it. Does it meet the mark? Like, is this something that, is this a crop type? You know, a lot of times we talk about corn and we talk about barley. Should we be talking more about rye? Yeah, I definitely think we should be. So you're right. Rye is extremely flexible, so we can feed it either as a forage or as a grain. So depending on which route producer wants to go, there's options there. For cattle, we see it both going as a silage and as a grain. Quite commonly now on the monogastric side, so pigs and poultry, it's usually grain, but I've even seen some pig producers feeding it as forage as well. So lots of flexibility there's. In terms of its nutritional value, you know, it's, it's hitting a lot of the marks, it's highly digestible, it's got good protein content and it's got a really good fibre profile, which is what we see some of our health benefits and other associated benefits from as well. One of the things when I used to, you know, work in, when I was in the seed industry, I would hear about is like, people say the same thing about, like, triticale, the coarseness. Is that at all a concern? So we're not really seeing palatability issues, things like that. With the coarseness as a forage, we are trying to understand what some of the limitations are on feeding with some of the research that we've been doing. But we're seeing that it makes a really good replacement up to a certain percentage of the ration. And for me as a nutritionist, you know, I, I never formulate a diet to only have one ingredient anyways. Like, having a mix of ingredients is actually a good thing and so it fits quite well into our rations. Yeah. Is there, when you, when you look at the, the year and some of the research that you did here in 2025, what are some of the biggest takeaways, especially when it comes to that feed value? And what have. I know some of this testing has happened actually on farm. What have growers been seeing? Yeah, so. So it's been a really busy year for research on with our team, and both at the university level and with some commercial farms as well. So just very briefly, level, we've had a couple of projects that have just wrapped up this year. So one was through the University of Saskatchewan, and they were doing both grain and silage for feedlot cattle. So they did backgrounding and finishing cattle, trying to understand what the inclusion levels would be, how the cattle respond to that. At the end of the day, they basically say that, you know, we can feed it to all. All stages of cattle production without a problem there. Their recommended intake levels are about 30%. Replacing barley, either silage or grain is what they tested against. And we're hoping to do some further research where we compare it to some of the other cereal grains as well. And again, one. Oh, sorry, go ahead. No, go ahead. No, no, no, no, go ahead. I was gonna say one of the barriers that I think a lot of people have in their head when they hear about, like, say, hybrid rye, and from a feeding standpoint is. Is ergotic. And some of the. So have we. I guess how big of an issue is that? And if so, how are the genetics mitigating? Mitigating against it? Yeah. So, you know, I've been a livestock nutritionist for a long time now, and even if you'd asked me 10 or 15 years ago would I feed rye to pigs or cattle, I'd probably say no. And so now I work with kws. We're in a very different ball game. So our genetics have something called Pollen plus technology that's built in all of our lines, and that creates a significant amount of pollen during the flowering phase and reduces the risk of ergot spores from being able to get into the head of the plant. And so that significantly reduces the risk of ergot overall for that crop. But at the end of the day, nutritionists and producers like to actually see data, and they like to actually know what they're feeding is going to be safe for their livestock, because ergot can cause some significant health concerns. And so what we did this year is we collected samples from all across Canada. We collected 25 samples from Alberta through to Quebec, and we tested them. There's two types of ergot tests that you can do one is the standard percent by weight test that most grain elevators, feed mills use. It's very quick, it's cheap, it's easy to do, and basically it's just counting the visible ergot in a set amount of sample. And so it's very easy to do. The other test is what the nutritionists like to use and it's measuring what the actual toxic levels are. And so they don't always correlate, which is a bit of a problem. So a feed mill might say, yeah, we'll, we'll accept up to a certain percent by weight, but the nutritionist might have a totally different set of values in terms of the ergot alkaloids, and they don't always match up. So it creates some challenges. So this year I collected all these samples and we've analysed every sample for both things and it's given us a set of guidelines that we can now use for recommendations for nutritionists and producers. So, Basically, if a percent by weight test comes back as 0.1% or higher, I can automatically say that's, that's not going to be a great feed option. I'd highly recommend it go into a different market, like have it cleaned, go into milling and distilling somewhere else. But if you had to feed it, then test for those alkaloids, understand what's actually going on and go from there. But if it's below that 0.1% percent percent by weight, then it likely makes a good feed ingredient. But we still want to understand what those alkaloid levels are. So a nutritionist would likely still test to make sure that they feel comfortable and know what's there. And so we're building this database like we started this year and we're going to continue to do this year over year so we can be a leader and have that information available for nutritionists and producers to build confidence in the crop. We found that over 90% of the samples we tested this year, of our KWS samples, were acceptable for feed. They were good. So the only ones that we found that were not were actually in areas where they had severe drought and then they had a lot of rain and they had a big second growth of that crop. So they had two flowering stages. The pollen plus technology didn't work as well, which is expected in that type of a situation. And so those crops we recommended go into a different market and away from the feed market, but those were the only ones where we saw any challenges. Everything else, from Alberta right through to Quebec was Good to go. So that's interesting. We're learning a lot more about or get right, like, and it's. Yeah, that information is power, especially from a feeding perspective, because people want to make sure that they're, you know, they have feeding options, but also don't want to make sure that they're not harming the, you know, the livestock from a ration. What's in the ration perspective? So that's fascinating. Yeah, yeah, it's. It's a very complex topic and there's a lot of moving parts. But we're working with livestock nutritionists and researchers. We're working with, even with Ag Canada and trying to build relationships there to build more of a database on what's going on across the country. And KWS is supporting that and however we can as well. What about from a forage perspective? We were just kind of talking about, you know, from feeding from a grain side of things. But what about from a forage perspective? Yeah, so similar to taking grain samples this year, I also took a lot of forage samples from across the country. And we, we ran those to do some nutrient analysis testing. And we did basically from Alberta again to Ontario in this case, and we divided them into three categories. So we looked at early cut, mid cut, and late cut samples and to really try and hone down the difference between when the forage is cut and what that nutritional value is. And we're going to continue to do this again year over year. We're working with our plant breeders in Germany as well to really try and understand this to even more of a fine detail, but all with the goal of helping producers on that flexibility side. So maybe they want to make a decision that, you know, they need to plant their second crop on a specific day. This data is going to give them that information to say, okay, this is what the nutritional value of the rye would be if I had to harvest it a week earlier than that. Right. And flip side, if they wanted to look at a specific nutritional value, they can understand when they might need to actually harvest that. So that's what we're trying to build, what we found. So the early cut samples, most of those were cut early in May in Ontario, and they were about 17 and a half crude protein, percent crude protein. They had a really good NDF digestibility value, great feed for lactating dairy cattle, for example, the mid cut, that was more the boot stage, and they had about 15% crude protein, again, good digestibility, good feed product. And then that late cut, that was more western Canada. So Saskatchewan, Alberta. And they were cut sort of end of June, beginning of July. Much lower crude protein content, about 10% with lower digestibility, which is what we expect. But we're going to put all this information together. It'll be available on our website and our technical, technical materials very soon, so producers will be able to use that as a tool. If a nutritionist or producer, if thinking about hybrid rye for the first time, whether that's, you know, feeding or forage, what are the things that, you know, the. Maybe the introductory things it should do and maybe even more importantly, not do. What are your thoughts there? Yeah, so, yeah, the optimal. It's really going to vary depending on, you know, whether you're a cattle feeder, you're a pig feeder, whether you're going for grain or forage, what your objectives are. But I would say that the initial goal is to get the crop off to a good start. So you really want to make sure in the fall that your field is ready to go, that you have, you know, good seeding, you had a good plant stand, and that's going to set you up for success with your programme the following year. It's going to help dictate the higher yields, it's going to reduce your ergot risk by focusing in the fall and getting that plant in properly. And then when it comes to the feeding side of things, you know, rye is a fairly new ingredient in North America for a lot of people. And for me, it's about trying to build comfort. And so I would say start low. If you're hesitant, don't include it at 50%, include it at 10% of your ration, start low, see how it goes, see how the pigs respond, get your nutritionist to build some comfort formulating with it as well, and. And then gradually increase the amount that you're using. And that's what most producers have been doing, is they kind of go in at 10, 15% on the grain side, see how it goes, and then increase it. And even on the silage side, we see that a little bit. You know, start to blend it in and then. And then increase the amount. So that's one thing. The mycotoxin testing is a big thing. So not just ergot, but understanding what all your mycotoxins are. And I recommend this, whether it's corn, barley, wheat, you know, the hybrid or I know what your dawn levels are, know what your levels are, because then you can actually formulate a ration properly and not have those negative impacts to the animals. So those would be the big things. And at the end of the day, give it a try. Like it's something new, it's a new tool in your toolbox. It's kind of exciting to have something new in a toolbox and we don't get that a lot of the time, so. Yeah, well, there's just so much flexibility, but I think that's, that's the intimidating part of it for a lot of people is that, yeah, it's, it, there's so much flexibility that it's like, it feels like there's complexity, but there's not. It's just you have a lot of options. You do. And like this year, for example, you know, the weather was very different all across the country and we had some people that had every intention of, you know, they had a field, they were going to take it for grain and experiencing dry conditions in the spring, they decided it probably wasn't the best idea and they actually took up for forage and they got a really forage crop off of it and then planted something else after. Right. So. But they made that decision in the spring. It wasn't a pre planned decision, but having a crop like this gives you that flexibility and the ability to make those decisions if you need to. So. Yeah, and any if, if somebody has been using, say, winter triticale in their, in their programme, it's, it's a pretty easy option to switch to hybrid rye. Right? Yeah. So one of the dairy farms that we worked with in Ontario, one of the commercial farms, they planted half of their field with our hybrid rye and half with their winter triticale that they usually use. And so the triticale went in at a much higher seeding rate than ours. The cost per acre, the yield per acre was actually very similar between the two fields. The biggest difference was the earliness of harvest. So they were able to get the hybrid rye off the field nine days earlier, which meant that was nine days earlier, they could get their corn in the ground after and then reap the benefits of that on the back end of the second crop. So, yeah, it's even in western Canada we see the same about a week to ten days earlier versus the winter triticales. The consistency with the hybrid rye is really good as well. So I often tell people that it's, it's like riding the kid roller coaster versus the adult roller coaster. When it comes to yield or when it comes to crude protein, you know, our peaks and valleys are pretty small with the hybrid rye, whereas some of the other crops you get big swings depending on the weather conditions and you don't always know what you're going to get. So you might one year get a higher yielding triticale, but the next year you might not. Right. Whereas the rye is much more consistent. And you've mentioned pigs several times. Is that because of the sensitivity in the feed ration or just hit on that? Because I've heard you mention hogs several times. Yeah. So In Europe, about 65% of all the hybrid rye that's grown is actually feeding pigs. So it's the main market for feeding there. And so that's. It is a very large market here. We're seeing more and more pig producers becoming interested in it, especially if they're growing their own crops and milling on farm. It makes a really good fit for them. But even some of the bigger feed mills are starting to trial with it a little bit across the country and get some experience with it. So pigs really like it. There's some health benefits that go along with pigs. We have a research project that's just wrapping up in Quebec and they actually saw less aggression in their group house sows, which is something that all of our farms are having to move to if they haven't already done that yet in Canada. So to have sows that are less likely to start fights and more likely to walk away from a fight is actually kind of a cool thing. Right. So there's lots of other benefits that go along on the pig side that people are really interested in. Cool stuff. Laura, thanks so much for joining us here today. Really appreciate it. Yeah, no, thanks for having me. It's always great to talk about rye and what we're doing.