Evaluation of swine diet formulation based on amino acid digestibility estimates

Abstract

Three experiments were carried out to test the hypothesis that formulation of diets using true amino acid digestibility (TAAD) values for various alternative ingredients (AI) will result in similar performance to that achieved with a corn-soybean meal based diet. The TAAD values were obtained by swine ileal (I) and precision-fed (PF) rooster methods. A control corn-soy (C) diet provided the basal amino acid composition for use in the formulation of the AI diets. Additional diets with higher amino acid levels were prepared using ileal (ID) and precision-fed (DPF) digestibility data in formulation. Average daily gain (ADG) and feed intake (ADFI) were significantly higher (P<0.01) when pigs were fed the C diet than when fed either the I or PF diets. Feeding diets ID and DPF resulted in higher   (P<0.01) ADG and ADFI than diet I and PF respectively. Pair feeding the C and AI diets produced same performance indicating that another factor may be related with intake of diets. It was concluded that formulation of diets using AI substituting soybean meal to levels of digestible amino acids equal to soybean meal-based diets may not give the same performance.