Effects of dietary probiotic, liquid feed and nutritional concentration on the growth performance, nutrient digestibility and fecal score of weaning piglets

Abstract

Objective: This study was conducted to investigate the effects of dietary probiotic blend and liquid feed program at different nutritional densities on growth performance, nutrient digestibility, fecal score of weaning piglets.Methods: A total of 120 weaning pigs with an initial body weight of 7.05±0.93 kg per pig (21 days of age) were randomly allocated into 1 of the following 8 dietary treatments (3 replicates per treatment with 5 pigs per replicate) in a 2×2×2 factorial arrangement (nutrition levels: apparent metabolic energy [AME] = 3,500 kcal/kg, crude protein [CP] = 20% vs AME = 3,400 kcal/kg, CP = 19.42%; feed types:dry vs wet; probiotics levels: 0 mg/kg vs 300 mg/kg).Results: During d 5 to d 15, greater average daily gain (ADG) and average daily feed intake (ADFI) (p<0.05) were observed in probiotics treatments. During d 15 to d 25, gain:feed (G:F) ratio (p<0.05) were significantly improved in probiotics, wet feed and high nutrition diet. Moreover, two interactions i) between nutrition levels and feed types, and ii) between nutrition levels and probiotics were found in G:F ratio. Furthermore, there was a significant positive interaction on G:F among those 3 factors (p<0.05). Overall, increasing ADG, ADFI, and G:F ratio were detected in probiotics treatment significantly (p<0.05). Besides, an obvious reduction on fecal score was observed in probiotics treatment from d 0 to d 5 (p<0.05). There was an interactive effect on fecal score between feed types and nutrition concentrations from d 5 to d 25 (p<0.05).Conclusion: These results indicated that probiotics supplementation could benefit growth performance and reduce the frequency of watery feces. Besides, wet feed program (feed:water = 1:1.25) could improve the G:F. The effect of liquid feed or probiotic could be influenced by dietary nutrition density in weaned piglets. An increased value of G:F was obtained when wet feeding a high nutrition diet (100 kcal higher than NRC 2012 recommendations) was supplemented with probiotics for 15 to 25 days.

A regression for estimating metabolizable glucose in diets of weaned piglets for optimal growth performance

“…The probable reason is that the palatability of piglets was improved by increasing the amount of corn starch. More dry matter intake had no effect on FCE, even though it might have caused the growth of weaned piglets [27], which was consistent with our results. In addition, the co-treatment group with both higher crude protein digestibility and crude fat digestibility was Treatment Diets B and C (132.5 and 300.0 g/kg MG).…”

Differential responses of weaned piglets to supplemental porcine or chicken plasma in diets without inclusion of antibiotics and zinc oxide

“…Dietary supplementation with ZnO and AGP has been shown to be capable of suppressing the colonization of pathogenic bacteria in the intestine and decreasing post-weaning diarrhea ( Nofrarías et al., 2006 ; Shelton et al., 2011 ; Cho et al., 2015 ). In this trial, there were more than 37% of piglets with fecal score ≥2 which might be ascribed to the high crude protein level (20%) and the high content of soybean meal that have been approved in the previous studies ( Li et al., 1990 ; Wen et al., 2018 ; Zhang et al., 2020 ). Notably, the percentage of piglets with fecal score at 2, or ≥2 were lower in the PC than in the NC and SDCP groups, but was not different between the PC and SDPP groups, which was consistent with the results of growth performance.…”

Effects of Bacillus-based probiotics on growth performance, nutrient digestibility, and intestinal health of weaned pigs

“…Pigs fed PRO tended to have improved ATTD of CP (87.25 vs. 84.13%; p < 0.10). Several studies have shown that the addition of Bacillus to pig feed could improve growth performance or reduce the incidence of diarrhea [16,23]. However, some previous studies failed to observe such positive effects on growth performance [24][25][26].…”