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Protease supplementation improved growth performance and profitability of nursery pigs consuming a corn-soybean meal based diet
Dietary protease (NZ) supplementation is a viable solution to reduce diet cost by increasing amino acid digestibility from various ingredients. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of protease supplementation (500 ppm of Cibenza® DP100, Novus International Inc., St. Charles, MO) on growth performance of nursery pigs consuming corn-soybean meal based diets. Dietary treatments included positive (POS) diet that meet or exceed NRC (2012) nutrient recommendations and NZ diet that was formulated to have similar nutrient profiles as POS diet using improved digestibility coefficients obtained from previous digestibility trials. A negative (NEG) control diet was obtained by replacing 500 ppm of NZ with an equal amount of ground corn. A total of 990 pigs (BW: 6.0 ± 0.7kg; 37 × C-22, PIC, Hendersonville, TN) weaned at 21 d of age were housed (22 pigs per pen, half barrows and half gilts) in a commercial research facility and fed common phase 1 diet for 7 days. Phase 2 and 3 were fed from d 7-21 and 21-42 after weaning, respectively, and constituted the experimental period. Body weight and feed intake were determined at 21, and 42 d post-weaning. A complete randomized block design with 15 replicate pens per treatment was used and data were analyzed using the mixed procedure (SAS® Institute, Cary, NC). Inclusion of NZ significantly improved growth performance compared to NEG on final BW (21.1 vs. 20.1 kg; +5.2%, P < 0.001), ADG (390 vs. 362 g/d; +7.7%, P < 0.001), ADFI (582 vs. 553 kg/d; +5.2%, P = 0.003), and GF (670 vs. 655 g/kg feed; +2.3%, P = 0.02). No statistical difference was determined between POS and NZ on final BW (21.2 vs. 21.1 kg; P = 0.81), ADG (397 vs. 390 g/d; P = 0.46), ADFI (589 vs. 582 g/d; P = 0.57), and G:F (674 vs. 670 g/kg feed; P = 0.57). Supplementing NZ considerably reduced the cost of diet per kg BW gain (0.59 vs. 0.55 $/kg gain; -6.6%, P< 0.001), which is an indicator of profitability. In conclusion, the result validated that protease supplementation can improve the digestibility and bioavailability of nutrients in a corn-soybean meal based diet, therefore reduce diet cost and maintain growth performance.
Keywords:
Growth performance, Pigs, Protease