Interactive effect of dietary protein and dried citrus pulp levels on growth performance, small intestinal morphology, and hindgut fermentation of weanling pigs

Abstract

Weanling pigs ( = 108, 21 d of age, 5.82 ± 0.16 kg initial BW) were assigned to a 2 × 2 factorial arrangement of treatments to evaluate the effects of dietary levels of CP (high- and low-CP diets) and dried citrus pulp (DCP; 0% and 7.5%) on growth performance, small intestinal morphology, and hindgut fermentation. Pigs were blocked by initial BW and allotted to 1 of 9 pens, each containing 3 pigs. The high-CP diets consisted of feeding 20% and 21% CP levels throughout phase 1 (0 to 14 d) and phase 2 (14 to 28 d), respectively. For the low-CP diets, CP levels were reduced by 4% units as compared with the high-CP diets in both phases. Crystalline AA were supplied to maintain an ideal AA pattern. Pig BW and pen feed disappearance were recorded weekly. On d 7 and 28 postweaning, 1 pig from each pen was euthanized for collection of small intestinal tissues and digesta from cecum and colon. There were no CP × DCP interactions for growth performance and gut morphology. Although the low-CP diet decreased ADG ( = 0.03) and G:F ( = 0.02) from d 21 to 28 postweaning, overall performance was unaffected by the treatments. On d 7 postweaning, pigs fed the low-CP diet tended to have increased ( = 0.09) crypt depth in the duodenum. Low-CP diets tended to increase ( = 0.06) crypt depth and reduce ( = 0.08) villus:crypt ratio in the jejunum on d 7. Dietary treatments did not affect ileal morphology. On d 7 postweaning, low-CP diets tended to reduce ( = 0.09) cecal total VFA, whereas dietary DCP inclusion tended to decrease ( = 0.07) colonic propionate. Including 7.5% DCP to the diet decreased ( < 0.05) colonic isovalerate and ammonia N concentrations on d 7 only for pigs fed the low-CP diet. On d 28 postweaning, DCP inclusion in low-CP diets decreased ( < 0.05) butyrate, isovalerate, and valerate concentrations in the cecum, as well as isovalerate, valerate, and ammonia N concentrations in the colon. Including 7.5% DCP to the diet increased ( < 0.05) acetate:propionate ratio in the hindgut on both d 7 and 28 postweaning only for pigs fed the high-CP diet. Lactate concentration was unaffected by the treatments. These results indicate that feeding low-CP AA-supplemented diets did not compromise overall growth performance, but slightly increased damage in the gut morphology of weanling pigs. Moreover, adding 7.5% DCP to low-CP AA-supplemented diets shifted the fermentation pattern in the hindgut of weanling pigs by decreasing protein fermentation metabolites.

Effects of dried citrus pulp and fermented medicinal plants on growth performance, nutrient digestibility, blood characteristics, and meat quality in growing–finishing pigs

“…Therefore, the present study was designed to determine the effects of supplementation of fermented medicinal plants in diet containing dried citrus pulp in growingfinishing pigs. Our data indicated that dietary inclusion of dried citrus pulp at 10% had no detrimental effects on ADG, ADFI, and G:F. In agreement with the results of the current experiment, previous studies with weanling pigs (7.5% dried citrus pulp; Almeida et al 2017) and finishing pigs (15% dried citrus pulp; Crosswhite et al 2013) demonstrated that citrus pulp could be used in weanling and finishing pig diets without impairing growth performance. Conversely, several studies indicated that dietary inclusion of citrus pulp had negative effects on animal growth performance.…”

“…Citrus pulp, a by-product from citrus juice industry, has been used in livestock feeding, especially in ruminants diets (Bampidis and Robinson 2006;Villarreal et al 2006;Caparra et al 2007;Oni et al 2008;Gouvêa et al 2016;Gobindram et al 2017). However, several studies indicated that citrus pulp can be included in monogastric animal diets to reduce feed costs (Cerisuelo et al 2010;Strong et al 2015;Almeida et al 2017).…”

Meta-analysis of relationship between weaning age and daily weight gain of piglets in the farrowing and nursery phases

“…The papers that both assessors assessed affirmatively for all questions were included in the analysis, yielding 28 papers. These articles were Nielsen et al (2001), Houška et al (2004, Wellock et al (2008), Li et al (2008), Kutzer et al (2009), Zonderland et al (2010), Fels et al (2012, Madsen & Bee (2014), Bell et al (2015), Baldinger et al (2016), Van Wettere et al (2016, Almeida et al (2017), Vanrolleghem et al (2019, Montsho et al (2016), Kalita et al (2015), Jin et al (2019), Tsourgianis et al (2004, Devillers and Farmer (2009), Bohnenkamp et al (2013) Using Excel® software, the data regarding the impact of weaning age on piglet performance were organized for statistical analysis. The variables were tested for normality of the residuals using Shapiro-Wilk test and homogeneity of variance using Levene's test.…”