May 13, 2010

Spanish study reveals dietary fibre enhances pig productive performance

A research team from the Department of Animal and Food Science, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, Spain, discovered that dietary protein and fibre boosts productive performance and health status of piglets.

Ninety-six 35-day-old piglets (9.11 +/- 0.60 kilogramme of BW) were placed in 32 pens of three animals each and allotted to four dietary treatments for 21 days. The four diets were based on rice, dairy products and soy meal in a 2 x 2 factorial arrangement of treatments, with two levels of crude protein (CP) (15.4 vs. 19.4%, as-fed basis) and two levels of dietary fibre [DF; low fibre (LF) 5.3% NDF and high fibre (HF) 7.15% NDF, as-fed basis].  The HF diet was developed by supplementing the basal diet with 40 g/kg of wheat bran and 20 g/kg of sugar beet pulp.

Pigs fed the HF diets had greater average daily gain (390 vs. 457 gram) and large intestine weight (4.4 vs. 5.4% of BW). This coincided with a greater short-chain fatty acid concentration (especially of acetic and butyric acids), a decrease in Escherichia coli counts (7.77 vs. 6.86 log of cfu/g of faeces), and an increase in the ratio of lactobacilli:enterobacteria (0.76 vs. 1.37).

However, CP level did not modify the productive performance, but 20% CP increased the relative weight (% of BW) of the small (6.5 vs. 7.7) and large intestine (3.8 vs. 4.3). In the large bowel, the 20% CP diet increased the numbers of goblet cells (4.6 vs. 5.4/100 microm) and reduced the numbers of intraepithelial lymphocytes (1.8 vs. 1.3/100 microm). In relation to health status, increasing DF was dependent of the dietary CP content. Supplementing the 16% CP diet with DF reduced the faecal score and increased the antibiotics interventions, whereas the opposite was the case in the 20% CP diet.

As a whole, CP showed major effects on the gastrointestinal weight and gut barrier integrity, whereas DF increased the productive performance and promoted major changes in the microbial colonisation and fermentation variables.