The effect of supplementation of different lysine sources on the performance of weaned pigs from 4 up to 10 weeks of age

Abstract

The experiment was carried out to study the effect of supplementation of 3 lysine sources (toasted soybean, fish meal and L-lysine- HC1) into a maize-base diet for weaning pigs from 4 up to 10 weeks of age. 80 weaned (40 males + 40 females) used were divided into 4 trial diets with 2 replicates. There following 4 trial diets used: diet A (weaning diet) diet B (93.31% maize + 4% vitamin mix: L-Lysine-HCI); diet C (65.46% maize + 30.54% toasted soybean meal + 4% vitamin mix) and diet D (79.95% maize + 16.05% fish meal + 4% vitamin mix). The average of the 3 studied variables (kg feed intake, kg weight gain and kg/kg feed efficiency daily) for each diet were as follows: diet A (0.707; 0.410 and 0.617); diet B (0.288; 0.008 and 0.025); diet C (0.739; 0.368 and 0.561) and diet D (0.378; 0.124 and 0.445). There was a highly significant difference (p < 0.0001)between the performance between diet A and diet C groups with diet B and diet D, but not significant difference (p>0.05) was found between the diet A and diet C. The conclusions and suggestions drawn are : the corn-toasted soybean meal diet (diet C) is comparable with the standard weaning piglet diet; supplementation fish meal at 16% gives poor performance; supplementation L-lysine- HC1 should be accompanied by fulfillment protein requirements of pigs. Diversification of feedstuffs rich in lysine is a good way of balancing pig diet formulation.