Grass/clover silage for growing/finishing pigs – effect of silage pre-treatment and feeding strategy on growth performance and carcass traits

ABSTRACT

This study evaluated the influence of feeding strategy and grass/clover silage pre-treatment on pig growth performance and carcass traits. In total, 128 pigs weighing 30–110 kg were fed either a commercial control feed or received silage in a pellet (SP) or in a total mixed ratio (TMR) containing chopped silage (SC) or intensively treated silage (SE). Silage replaced 20% of dietary crude protein content (g/kg). Diet affected weight gain (P = 0.001), with pigs fed the SP diet showing best overall growth performance. Pigs fed the SC diet had the lowest weight gain (P = 0.001), while pigs fed the SE diet performed similarly to those fed the control diet. Carcass weight and dressing percentage differed between the diets (P = 0.016 and P = 0.018), but there was no difference in lean meat content (P = 0.832). The results show satisfactory growth performance and carcass traits, indicating that silage can replace other protein sources in growing/finishing pig diets.

KEYWORDS:

• Growing/finishing pig
• silage
• legumes
• TMR
• growth performance
• carcass traits

Acknowledgements

This study was funded by the Swedish Research Council for Environment, Agricultural Science and Spatial Planning (Formas). The authors are grateful to the staff at Lövsta pig research unit, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, for everyday help with the pigs and feed during the study. The authors also would like to thank Camilla Andersson and the staff at the laboratory at the Department of Animal Nutrition and Management, SLU, for help with preparing the silage rations and with the chemical analyses, the staff at Genevad Grönfodertork for helping to produce the pelleted silage, and to all people involved at Swedish Agro for optimising and producing the diets used in this study. Finally, the authors thank Kristina Andersson for valuable help with all statistical analyses performed on the research data.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Swedish Research Council: [grant number 2018-02391].