Effects of Dietary Supplementation of Enzymes in a Soybean Meal Rich Diet on the Performance of Weaned Pigs (4 – 8 weeks)

Abstract

The effects of non starch polysaccharides degrading enzymes (NSPase) type mixture supplementation in high soybean meal weaned pigs diet were studied by using 96 crossbred (LR ¥ LW ¥D) pigs aged 4 weeks. The animals were divided into 12 groups of 8 animals each. Animals in each group were kept in a battery metal cage where feed and water were provided ad libitum. Each group of the animals was randomly fed one of the experimental diets as until 8 weeks of age. The diets were as follow: Diet 1: A control broken rice-soybean meal (18%)-fish meal (8%)-skimmed milk (3%) diet; Diet 2: A negative control broken rice-soybean meal (23%)-fish meal (1%)-skimmed milk (2%) diet; and Diet 3: Diet 2 but supplemented with NSPase type mixture (AVEzyme02) at dosage of 500 g/ton feed. Animals on Diet 2 had significantly poorer (P<0.05) average weight gain, average daily gain, average feed intake, average daily feed intake, feed conversion ratio (FCR) and higher mortality rate than those on Diet 1. The enzyme supplementation of the high soybean meal diet (Diet 3) significantly improved (P<0.05) performances of the weaned pigs, which were very comparable to those on the control high fish meal and skimmed milk diet (Diet 1). The different, however, were not statistically significant. The NSPase type mixture is safe, cost effective and demonstrated a potential of beneficial effects on improvement of
soybean meal utilization in weaned pig diet.