Towards Integrated Nutritional Management of Growing-Finishing Pigs

摘要

Feeding rather simple, corn and soybean meal based diets to nursery pigs reduced post-weaning growth performance, but had no long-term effect on growth performance in the growing-finishing phase, days from weaning to market and carcass characteristics. Therefore, a reduction in feed costs may be obtained in the nursery phase by feeding less complex diets without compromising subsequent growth performance and carcass value. Detailed nutritional analyses and in vitro nutrient digestibility and availability assays confirm the substantial variability in nutritional value of corn distillers grains plus solubles (DDGS) that are used in Ontario. While color provides a reasonable prediction of the nutritional value of individual sample of DDGS, especially the available lysine content, this simple measurement has limitations. Given the relatively high fiber content of DDGS, fiber-degrading enzymes and microbial inoculants may be used to enhance the nutritional value of corn DDGS. The combined use of exogenous enzymes and inoculants appears more effective at enhancing the feeding value of corn DDGS in liquid-fed finishing pigs than in conventional dry feeding.