Performances, meat quality and boar taint of castrates and entire male pigs fed a standard and a raw potato starch-enriched diet.

摘要

In Europe there is increasing concern about the common practice of surgical castration of piglets without anaesthesia. One possible alternative to completely avoid castration is entire male pig (swine) production. Thus, the objective of this study was to compare the growth performance, carcass characteristics, organ wt., meat quality traits, fat scores and boar taint compounds in the adipose tissue of group-penned entire male pigs and castrates. Furthermore, the effects of raw potato starch (RPS) fed for 7 days prior to slaughter were determined. Pigs (n = 36) were divided by body wt. (BW) into 12 blocks (3 littermates/block) and assigned to 3 experimental groups: surgical castrates; entire males; and entire males offered RPS (30 g RPS/100 g diet) for 7 days prior to slaughter. Pigs had ad libitum access to the feed from 22 to 107 kg, individual feed intake was recorded daily and BW once a wk. Entire males grew more slowly (P < 0.01), consumed less feed (P < 0.01) and were more efficient than castrates. Compared to castrates, carcass dressing percentage was lower (P < 0.01) and percentage of valuable cuts was higher (P < 0.01) in entire males. Hearts, kidneys, bulbourethral glands and salivary glands were heavier (P < 0.001) in entire males than in castrates. Meat quality traits did not (P > 0.05) differ among experimental groups, but adipose tissue was more unsaturated in entire males than in castrates as indicated by higher fat scores. Feeding RPS reduced (P = 0.04) skatole concn. in tissues (expressed in g/g lipid) in entire males, whereas androstenone and indole levels were not affected. Hence, these results confirm that production of entire males is a highly efficient process; however, the observed high androstenone levels represent a major challenge.