Abstract

This study aimed to investigate the effects of dietary tryptophan (Trp), pyridoxine and niacin supplementation on feed intake and growth performance of weaning pigs fed low-protein diet. A total of 42 day-old crossbred (Landrace×Yorkshire×Duroc) of weaned female pigs were reared under seven dietary treatments. Treatments were 1) corn-soybean meal diet, 2) pyridoxine + niacin, 3) pyridoxine, 4) niacin, 5) 0.30% synthetic Trp + pyridoxine + niacin, 6) 0.30% synthetic Trp + pyridoxine and 7) 0.30% synthetic Trp + niacin. The experimental results indicated no significant difference (p>0.05) in feed intake for pigs fed the experimental diets. However, pigs fed the synthetic Trp + pyridoxine diet tended to have better feed intake among dietary treatments, followed by synthetic Trp + niacin diet. Overall (wk 1 to 8), pigs consuming supplemental Trp diets had better weight gain and feed efficiency than without Trp supplemental pigs (p<0.01). In conclusion, supplementation of Trp in combination with pyridoxine or niacin in weaning pigs diets greatly improve growth performance than only supplementing Trp alone in low crude protein diet.

Keywords:

Feed intake, low-protein diet, niacin, pyridoxine, tryptophan, weaning piglets,

References

Competing interests

The authors have no competing interests.

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The authors have no competing interests.