Evaluation of three commercially available pig starter feeds in South West Nigeria

Abstract

The study evaluated the chemical composition of three available commercial starter feeds and their effect on performance of weaner pigs. Three samples of commercially available pig starter feeds in Southwest, Nigeria were evaluated using two different approaches (biological and chemical analyses). The three commercial feed samples in the study, were assigned to three dietary treatments, namely commercially available feed 1 (CAF1), commercially available feed 2 (CAF2) and commercially available feed 3 (CAF3). Forty-eight weaner pigs with an average initial body weight (BW) of 11.15±0.58 kg were randomly apportioned to the three treatments for biological (performance) evaluation of the three commercially available pig starter feeds. There were significant (P<0.05) differences among the performance indices across the treatments. Pigs fed with CAF1 and CAF2 had the highest (45.03 Kg) and lowest (26.04 g) values respectively for final body weight, even when the pigs fed with CAF2 and CAF3 had similar average daily feed intake (0.84 vs 1.0 Kg) while that of pigs fed CAF1 was significantly (P<0.05) higher (1.32 Kg). The feed with lower cost (CAF2) increased the feed cost per kilogram live weight gain of the animals by 10.93 and 13.70% when compared with that of feeds with higher cost (CAF1 and CAF3) respectively. Majorly, the ME (Kcal/Kg) and crude fibre contents of CAF2 were at variance with the nutrient requirements of weaner pigs, hence the inferior performance and economic results obtained with the diet. Even though, there were marginal variations in the nutrient compositions of the CAF1 and CAF3 feeds, their growth performance and economy of gain results were comparable because they fell within the recommended nutrient requirement for this class of pigs. In conclusion, only two of the three commercially available pig feeds (CAF1 and CAF3) sampled, could be said to have been formulated to meet the recommended nutrient requirement for this class of pigs, hence their comparable performance and economy of gain results.

Keywords: Commercial pig feeds, Weaner pigs, Biological evaluation, Chemical composition