The effect of weaner diet protein content and diet quality on the long-term performance of pigs to slaughter
IJ Wellock, JG M Houdijk, AC Miller, BP Gill and I Kyriazakis. 2009. Journal of Animal Science. 87:1261-1269.
15-Jul-2009 (16 years 10 months 23 days ago)An improvement in diet quality by using animal protein sources and processed cereals may minimize the reduction in performance arising from the use of decreased CP diets. It is important to deal with the long term effects of improving diet quality in the immediate post-weaning period on piglet health and performance observed in the immediate post-weaning period and the increased costs of high quality diets.
A study was conducted to investigate short and long-term effects of manipulating dietary CP content and diet quality in weanling diets on health and performance of piglets by using a 2 × 2 factorial combination of CP inclusion (high-CP, 230 g of CP/kg vs. low-CP, 170 g of CP/kg) and diet quality (high-quality, cooked cereals, and animal protein vs. low-quality, raw cereals, and plant protein). Diets were fed ad libitum for 14 d post-weaning to 400 piglets weaned at 29.4 ± 3.1 d of age and 9.9 ± 1.0 kg of BW. At weaning piglets were removed from the sow and assigned to the 4 experimental diets. Piglets were housed in groups of 6 or 7 animals per pen. This resulted in 15 replicates per treatment throughout the weaning phase (<30 kg) and 5 replicates per treatment in the grower-finisher phase (>30 kg). From d 14 to slaughter at 104 ± 3 kg, all pigs were fed the same series of standard commercial diets.
High-quality diets promoted gut health as indicated by improved faecal lactobacilli to coliform ratio (P = 0.002) and decreased faecal enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli counts on d 11 post-weaning (P = 0.028), reducing the risk of post-weaning diarrhoea and improving pig health from weaning to the end of the weanling phase. Reducing CP content had no effect on gut health. High-CP (P = 0.053) and high-quality (P = 0.025) diets independently increased ADG during the first 14 d post-weaning compared with low-CP and low-quality diets, respectively. There were no interactions between dietary CP content and quality on any of the response criteria investigated. Despite differences in the immediate post-weaning period, there was no effect of manipulating diet quality or CP content for 2 wk post-weaning on lifetime performance with pigs reaching slaughter weight in 128 ± 7 d.
These results indicate that high-quality diets may protect pig gut health during the immediate post-weaning period. However, it may be possible to use less expensive, decreased quality weanling diets without any adverse effects on long-term performance when weaning older, heavier pigs and where health status, environmental control, and stock management are all maintained to a high standard.
A study was conducted to investigate short and long-term effects of manipulating dietary CP content and diet quality in weanling diets on health and performance of piglets by using a 2 × 2 factorial combination of CP inclusion (high-CP, 230 g of CP/kg vs. low-CP, 170 g of CP/kg) and diet quality (high-quality, cooked cereals, and animal protein vs. low-quality, raw cereals, and plant protein). Diets were fed ad libitum for 14 d post-weaning to 400 piglets weaned at 29.4 ± 3.1 d of age and 9.9 ± 1.0 kg of BW. At weaning piglets were removed from the sow and assigned to the 4 experimental diets. Piglets were housed in groups of 6 or 7 animals per pen. This resulted in 15 replicates per treatment throughout the weaning phase (<30 kg) and 5 replicates per treatment in the grower-finisher phase (>30 kg). From d 14 to slaughter at 104 ± 3 kg, all pigs were fed the same series of standard commercial diets.
High-quality diets promoted gut health as indicated by improved faecal lactobacilli to coliform ratio (P = 0.002) and decreased faecal enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli counts on d 11 post-weaning (P = 0.028), reducing the risk of post-weaning diarrhoea and improving pig health from weaning to the end of the weanling phase. Reducing CP content had no effect on gut health. High-CP (P = 0.053) and high-quality (P = 0.025) diets independently increased ADG during the first 14 d post-weaning compared with low-CP and low-quality diets, respectively. There were no interactions between dietary CP content and quality on any of the response criteria investigated. Despite differences in the immediate post-weaning period, there was no effect of manipulating diet quality or CP content for 2 wk post-weaning on lifetime performance with pigs reaching slaughter weight in 128 ± 7 d.
These results indicate that high-quality diets may protect pig gut health during the immediate post-weaning period. However, it may be possible to use less expensive, decreased quality weanling diets without any adverse effects on long-term performance when weaning older, heavier pigs and where health status, environmental control, and stock management are all maintained to a high standard.