Nutritive value of three tropical forage legumes and their influence on growth performance, carcass traits and organ weights of pigs
(2016) Tropical Animal Health and Production — Vol. 48, p. 1165-1173 (2016)
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- The effects of tropical forage legumes on feed intake, growth performance and carcass traits were investigated in 16 groups of 2 Large White × Duroc pigs. The diets consisted of a commercial corn soybean-meal diet as the basal diet and 3 forage-supplemented diets. Four groups of control pigs received daily 4% of body weight of the basal diet and 12 groups of experimental pigs were fed the basal diet at 3.2% of body weight completed with fresh leaves of one of the 3 forage legumes (Psophocarpus scandens, Stylosanthes guianensis and Vigna unguiculata) ad libitum. The study lasted 90 days. The in vitro digestion and fermentation of the forage legumes was also determined. The in vitro digestible energy content of the legumes was between 0.72 and 0.77 that of the basal diet (14.4 MJ/kg DM). Vigna unguiculata was the most digestible forage legume expect for crude protein digestibility. Feeding forage legumes lowered the dry matter intake by 4.5 to 9.6% (P<0.05), final body weight (P=0.013), slaughter weight, average daily gain and hot carcass weight (P<0.05) without affecting the feed conversion ratio (FCR), dressing percentage and back fat thickness. In conclusion, using forage to feed pig could be interesting in pig smallholder production with limited access to concentrate as FCR were not significantly affected.
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Kambashi, B., Kalala, G., Dochain, D., Mafwila, J., Rollin, X., Boudry, C., Picron, P., & Bindelle, J. (2016). Nutritive value of three tropical forage legumes and their influence on growth performance, carcass traits and organ weights of pigs. Tropical Animal Health and Production, 48, 1165-1173. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11250-016-1070-1 (Original work published 2016)