Effect of farm household income levels and rice‐based diet or water hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes) supplementation on growth/cost performances and meat indexes of growing and finishing pigs in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam

Abstract

An on-farm trial was carried out to improve the current low-income farmers' diet and to assess farm conditions that could accept the new ingredients using locally available feed resources in the Mekong Delta region. A total of 42 local Large White-type pigs, comprising 20 barrows and 22 gilts with initial-to-final mean live weight of 34.2-93.0 kg, were used. The trial was designed as a 3 × 3 factorial with three agricultural gross income levels of seven farm households and three dietary treatments. The annual income levels were high income (HI; $US2355 on average), medium income (MI; $US1439) and low income (LI; $US1116). The three types of diets were farmers' common diet (FCD), rice-based diet (RBD) and waterhyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes)-supplemented diet (WHD). A total of 12 pigs, consisting of two barrow-gilt couples in each diet treatment, were slaughtered at the end of the trial. The daily weight gain (DG) was higher and the feed conversion ratio (FCR) was lower in the MI and LI pigs than in the HI pigs over the entire fattening period (P < 0.01). No significant effect of the diet treatments was observed on the aforementioned two parameters, but the backfat thickness was least in WHD (16.8 mm) and next least in RBD (17.1 mm), compared with that of FCD pigs (19.4 mm; P < 0.05). The iodine values of RBD and WHD backfat were lower (P < 0.001) than those of FCD backfat. The cost performance, defined as feed cost per kg weight gain, was lowest for MI, intermediate for LI and highest for HI levels (P < 0.05). Therefore, the benefit was highest at the MI level and lowest at the HI level (P < 0.05). In contrast, cost performance of the diet treatments tended to be higher in FCD, and lower in RBD and WHD (P < 0.1). Then, the benefit tended to be higher in RBD and WHD than in the FCD diet (P < 0.1). Overall, these results suggest that the RBD and WHD diets be recommended especially to households with medium and low agricultural incomes.Key words: broken rice, carcass quality, farming systems, feed conversion ratio, green feed, rice bran.ally use a high proportion of rice bran (approx. 70%), a lower proportion of broken rice (20%), some commercial protein concentrate feed (concentrate feed), and a small amount of feed from wild plants and/or RICE BY-PRODUCTS OR WATER HYACINTH IN PIG DIET 321

Nutritive value of tropical forage plants fed to pigs in the Western provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo

“…and Lindberg (2013a) showed that when 50% of soybean protein was replaced with proteins from ensiled Colocasia esculenta, growth performance and carcass traits of local and improved pigs were not affected. Surprisingly, Men et al (2006) report high cost effectiveness of E. crassipes-based diets in Vietnam while this species scored really bad in terms of nutritive value in the present investigation. This allows expecting even higher efficiencies of feeding systems based on low cost forage with higher nutritive value than water hyacinth.…”

Effects of replacing fish meal with catfish (Pangasius hypophthalmus) processing waste water on the performance of growing pigs

“…In the Mekong Delta in Southern Vietnam, pig rearing is the most important income-generating activity among farmer households (Men et al 2006). In recent years, the imbalance between feed and animal product prices had resulted in very low economic returns for the producers.…”

Fermentation Quality of Ensiled Water Hyacinth (&lt;italic&gt;Eichhornia crassipes&lt;/italic&gt;) as Affected by Additives

“…There are only a limited number of reports on feeding WH to animals. Pigs showed an immediate acceptance of WH without drying ( Men et al, 2006 ) while Islam et al (2011) claimed that a major constraint for its use as a ruminant feed is the high water content. Cattle preferred WH silage containing the highest level of additives, 4 kg dried citrus pulp and 1 kg sugarcane molasses/100 kg pressed WH residue ( Baldwin et al, 1974 ).…”

“…Water hyacinth has received much attention in recent years due to its potential benefits as animal fodder, aquafeed, water purification, fertilizer, biogas production, etc. Numerous studies have evaluated WH as a feed source to ruminants ( Baldwin et al, 1975 ; Abdalla et al, 1987 ; Agarwala, 1988 ; Islam et al, 2009 ; Sophal, 2010 ), fish ( Okoye et al, 2002 ; Abdel-Fattah, 2003 ) and other animals ( Dey et al, 1983 ; Men et al, 2002 , 2006 ). Water hyacinth control methods fall into three main categories: physical, chemical and biological ( Julien et al, 2001 ).…”