PSIII-12 The effect of sodium butyrate and benzoic acid on nutrient digestibility and fecal volatile fatty acid concentrations in nursery pigs

Abstract

A total of 270 weaned pigs (21-d age) were used to evaluate the effects of administering benzoic acid (BA) alone or with sodium butyrate (SB) on nutrient digestibility, fecal VFA concentrations and growth performance. At weaning (age 21-d), pigs were blocked by initial BW (4.7 ± 0.21 kg) and allotted to 1 of 5 treatments with 9 replicate pens per treatment. Pigs remained on the same treatment through three feeding phases: Phase 1 (d 0-7), Phase 2 (d 7-21), and Phase 3 (d 21-40). The treatments were the Control diet without acidifier (C), C with 0.5% BA, and BA with 0.05%, 0.1% or 0.15% of SB to form SBA0.05, SBA0.1, and SBA0.15, respectively. Titanium dioxide was added in phase 3 diets (d21-40). Diets were fed in meal form and sampled at manufacturing and pen fecal samples were collected for two consecutive days at the end (d40). Samples were analyzed for the concentration of DM, GE, N, ash, NDF, ADF, calcium, and phosphorus and the ATTD for each nutrient was calculated. Additionally, fecal VFAs were quantified via gas chromatographic technique. Data were analyzed using Mixed procedure of SAS, with treatment as a fixed effect and initial BW block as a random effect. Level of sodium butyrate was used in IML procedure to generate coefficients for orthogonal contrast for BA, SBA0.05, SBA0.1, and SBA0.15. In feces, absolute butyrate (mM) and total VFA (mM) tended (P< 0.10) to increase quadratically with increasing SB supplementation. Similar to G:F ratio, pigs fed the BA diet had higher ATTD of DM, GE, N, ash, NDF, ADF, and P than pigs fed other treatments. Results suggest that the mechanism on improving growth performance differs among acidifiers.