Effects of feeding increasing levels of a proprietary yeast blend on growth performance of commercial nursery pigs

Abstract Text:

Two experiments were conducted to evaluate feeding increasing levels of Evosure^TM (NUTRIQUEST, Mason City, IA), a yeast additive for swine, on growth performance of commercial nursery pigs. In both experiments, weanling pigs were housed in pens and fed a common starter diet for 7 d. On d 7, pens within block were assigned randomly to experimental diets in a randomized complete block design. Data were analyzed using the MIXED procedure of SAS. In Exp 1, nursery pigs (n = 1,188; BW = 5.49±0.31 kg) were allotted to one of 4 dietary treatments containing 0 (CON), 0.22 (EVO1), 0.44 (EVO2) or 0.66 (EVO3) g/kg Evosure^TM with 11 replicates per treatment. This experiment was conducted over a 14-d period. Ending BW, ADG and G:F increased linearly (P < 0.05) with increasing levels of Evosure^TM. Compared to pigs fed CON, pigs fed EVO3 showed 4.2% greater ending BW (9.44 vs. 9.06 kg, P = 0.01), 10.0% higher ADG (0.30 vs. 0.27 kg/d, P = 0.01) and 9.6% higher G:F (0.86 vs. 0.78, P = 0.05). However, ADFI was not affected (P > 0.24) in this experiment. In Exp 2, nursery pigs (n = 1,296; BW = 5.03±0.37 kg) were allotted to one of 4 dietary treatments containing 0 (CON), 0.33 (EVO1), 0.66 (EVO2) or 0.99 (EVO3) g/kg Evosure^TM with 12 replicates per treatment. Pigs were fed the experimental diets for 21 d and switched to a common nursery diet for 24 d. Similar to Exp 1, feeding increasing levels of Evosure^TM for 21 d linearly increased (P < 0.05) pig BW, ADG and G:F, but did not affect ADFI (P > 0.59). Specifically, feeding EVO3 resulted in 3.7% greater BW (11.0 vs. 10.6 kg, P = 0.04), 7.3% higher ADG (0.30 vs. 0.28 kg/d, P = 0.02), and 5.1% higher G:F (0.80 vs. 0.76, P = 0.02) relative to feeding CON.  During the 24 d period when pigs were fed a common diet, BW, ADG and G:F were also increased linearly (P < 0.05) with increasing levels of Evosure^TM in previous diets. Pigs fed EVO3 were 3.3% heavier than those fed CON (22.7 vs. 22.0 kg, P = 0.05) at the end of this experiment. Results from these two experiments suggest that dietary supplementation of increasing levels of Evosure^TM linearly improved pig growth performance, and these linear effects could be extended to a later nursery phase.

Keywords: growth performance, nursery pigs, yeast