Feeding Kitchen Leftovers to Fattening Pigs Effects on Health and Production Performance

摘要

The use of kitchen leftovers as a feeding source in pigs has quality limitations as well as health and sanitary restrictions; nevertheless, it is still the only affordable food for some artisan pig farms. Productionperformance in hybrid pigs at an artisan farm in the State of Mexico, was studied. Four treatments (T1-T4) were administered to 50 hybrid pigs distributed at random as follows: T1 had 15 sows and T2, 15 castrated male pigs, both groups were fed with kitchen leftovers; T3 had 10 sows and T4, 10 castrated male pigs; these latter groups were fed with a commercial balanced feed. In order to analyse the differences between the means of the treatments a Tukey test was used. Proximal analysis showed the low nutritional quality of the leftovers. Animals fed with kitchen waste showed a higher percentage of respiratory and enteric signs that affected the muscular tissue development. Furthermore, leftovers increased feed conversion compared to the balanced diet. Treating the kitchen waste is recommended in order to diminish the pathogen incidence, and adding protein to the diet which will guarantee the fulfillment of animal nutritional needs. It is true that feeding with leftovers is cheap but it is convenient to take into account the cost involved which includes growth delay and both respiratory and digestive problems in animals.