Kemin’s Tips for Understanding New Grain Syndrome

At Kemin, we know that using fresh grains for the preparation of livestock compound feed immediately after harvest can result in substantial health and performance problems. Significantly reduced feed intake, gastroenteritis, fever, diarrhea, hives, vitamin deficiencies, and lower gains have been widely reported.

New Grain Syndrome can easily be prevented by storing the grains for several weeks before using them in feed application. This is because the associated negative effects observed seem to gradually decrease as time goes by.

For many producers, this is not an option due to geopolitics, raw material shortages, and high feed costs — all of which necessitate a quick implementation of available cereals to safeguard the supply to feed livestock.

At Kemin, we have conducted research on New Grain Syndrome, to advance industry knowledge using guidance and solutions that ensure the immediate use of freshly harvested grains to their fullest potential with maintaining optimal animal production performances and business profitability.

The challenges during and post-harvesting of grain

During and shortly after the harvesting of cereals various challenges can occur:

1. No or limited storage time. Due to the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, the industry faces significant shortages in raw materials, and demand highly exceeds supply, resulting in record prices. Consequently, freshly harvested grains will go to farms immediately, without storage or any waiting time for the settling of grains' nutritive value.
2. Changes post-harvest in nutritive value.^1,2 Large variations can exist in AME content between, or even within the same type of grain at harvest.
3. High intrinsic non-starch polysaccharide (NSP) content correlated to viscosity. This content naturally reduces over time due to endogenous glycanase activity, but it might require several months.
4. High microbial activity: This can be very high as the process of harvesting triggers bacterial and fungal activity.
5. Damage to grains before and during harvest. Causes can be too late timing, poor weather conditions, or poor equipment used during harvesting.
6. Delay in harvesting. Often occurs due to wet weather conditions, when there is a need to let the grains dry first, and/or the capacity of the dryers is lower than the capacity of the harvesters.
7. Too low or too high moisture levels. When too dry challenges may occur, for example, harvesting losses/shatter losses and increased dustiness, or, when too wet a high risk of spoilage.
8. Oxidation of the grains.

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