Determination and assessment of apparent ileal amino acid digestibility coefficients for the growing pig

Abstract

Diets contaimng barley meal, pea meal, meat and bone meal, or fish meal as sole protein sources were fed to growing pigs cannulated at the terminal ileum. The apparent ileal digestibilities of dietary amino acids and nitrogen were determined. The second part of the study was conducted to evaluate these amino acid digestibility values. Ten entire male pigs received a barley + pea + meat and bone + fish meal diet, and 10 were fed a diet containing enzymatically hydrolysed casein and synthetic amino acids as sole protein sources (control diet). A fixed amount of each diet (50.04 kg) was given over a 40-day period. The gross amino acid composition of the control diet equalled the determined apparent ileal digestible amino acid composition of the barley-based diet. The control protein source was assumed to be completely digestible, and the 2 feeding regimes were isocaloric. Similar mean growth rates (602.3 v. 607.3 g/day) and average lean contents of the ham joint (1912 v. 1841 g) for pigs on the barleybased and control diets respectively, showed that apparent ileal amino acid digestibility coefficients provide a reliable measure of the degree of amino acid digestion and absorption in growing pigs.

Keywords:

• pigs
• amino acids
• nitrogen
• diet
• digestibility
• cannulation