Digestibility and energy value of wheat and triticale in pelleted diets for pigs

Abstract

The objective of this work was to assess the effect of pelleting on increments in the digestibility and energy values of diets and test-ingredients wheat and triticale for pigs. Two samples of wheat and three samples of triticale were evaluated in five metabolism experiments, with a total collection of feces and urine. In the study, 160 pigs from the MS115 x F1 cross, with an average initial weight of 52.5±4.72 kg were used. Eight pigs per treatment, corresponding to eight replicates, were housed in individual metabolic cages. The reference diet (RD) was based on corn-soybean meal, whereas, in the test-diets (TD), wheat or triticale replaced 40% of the RD. The following treatments were evaluated: meal RD (MRD), pelleted RD (PRD), meal TD (MTD), and pelleted TD (PTD). Pelleting enhances the energy value of swine diets formulated with corn-soybean or corn-wheat-soybean meal; however, this beneficial effect of pelleting is not observed in diets based on corn-triticale-soybean meal. Pelleting increases the digestibility of crude protein and the energy values of wheat by 7 and 4%, respectively, but does not alter the digestibility and energy values of triticale.