300
Low calcium levels improve growth in piglets after weaning
Piglets have a low acidification capacity that may promote digestive disorders and diarrhea. The inclusion of CaCO3 and ZnO with high acid-binding capacity in weanling diets diets can aggravate the problem. It was hypothesized that reducing the levels of Ca from 0.95% to 0.35% (no addition of CaCO3) may improve the growth of piglets after weaning. A total of 240 piglets were distributed into three treatments during the pre-starter phase (0 to 14 days post-weaning; 8 replicates per treatment). Treatments were based on three different Calcium levels: High (HCa) with 0.95% of Ca (1.55% CaCO3), Medium (MCa) with 0.65% of Ca (0.78% CaCO3) and Low (LCa) with 0.35% of Ca (0% CaCO3). The diets contained 2520 Kcal NE/kg, 19.7% CP, and 1.39 Lys. Feed Intake and individual BW were registered on d 0, 7 and 14. The initial BW was 7.69 ± 0.01 kg for each treatment. Piglets fed HCa showed lower BW, ADG and G:F ratio than piglets with LCa and MCa (Table). These results show that feeding piglets low inclusion or no CaCO3 increased growth, suggesting that the reduction of CaCO3allow a better digestion of feed during the pre-starter phase.
Item |
Treat |
Pooled SEM |
p-Value |
||
LCa |
MCa |
HCa |
|||
BW d7, Kg |
8.43a |
8.33ab |
8.21b |
0.06 |
0.041 |
BW d14, kg |
10.72a |
10.6a |
10.16b |
0.08 |
0.0001 |
ADG 0-7d, g/d |
106.94a |
91.25ab |
74.62b |
8.37 |
0.044 |
ADFI 0-7d, g/d |
162.51 |
148.45 |
149.69 |
8.05 |
0.411 |
G:F 0-7d |
0.654a |
0.616a |
0.481b |
0.04 |
0.014 |
ADG 0-14d, g/d |
219.19a |
207.25a |
176.76b |
5.72 |
0.0002 |
ADFI 0-14d, g/d |
342.35 |
323.01 |
314.64 |
9.04 |
0.113 |
G:F 0-14d |
0.640a |
0.645a |
0.561b |
0.01 |
0.0003 |
Keywords: calcium, pigs, weaning