89 Inclusion of GuarPro F-71 in a corn and soybean meal based diet: Effects on growth performance and nutrient metabolism in growing pigs
Abstract Using alternative feedstuffs can be a feasible measure to reduce swine production cost. GuarPro F-71, a newly developed guar meal product, is considered as a potential protein source for pigs. This study was conducted to evaluate the effects of dietary GuarPro F-71 inclusion on growth performance and nutrient metabolism of growing pigs. Sixty crossbred barrows (31.9 ± 1.84 kg BW) were allotted to 5 dietary treatments according to a completely randomized experiment design with 4 pens/treatment and 3 pigs/pen. Diet 1 was a corn-and-soybean-meal based diet with nutrient composition following NRC (2012) recommendations. GuarPro-71 was used to replace 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100% of soybean meal (on equivalent CP basis) in Diet 1 to generate Diets 2, 3, 4, and 5, respectively. Crystalline amino acids were used to balance the essential amino acid concentrations across the 5 diets. Dietary inclusion of GuarPro-71 reduced ADFI (P < 0.01), whereas no clinical signs of unhealthiness of pigs were observed. The magnitude of ADFI reduction showed linear but also quadratic relationships (P < 0.05) with the GuarPro-71 inclusion rate. The blood plasma concentrations of six metabolites (urea nitrogen, total protein, albumin, glucose, total cholesterol, and total triglycerides) were not affected (P > 0.30), indicating that the pigs’ metabolic utilization of nutrients was not compromised. The cubic effect (P < 0.05) of dietary GuarPro-71 inclusion on the G:F suggests that the level of soybean meal replacement up to 75% by GuarPro-71 did not negatively affect feed efficiency in pigs. In short, the feed intake reduction due to the dietary GuarPro-71 inclusion should be, if not solely, responsible for the ADG and final BW reduction. Overall, this study suggests that the dietary inclusion of GuarPro-71 can negatively affect ADFI and ADG in growing pigs. The reason for the ADFI reduction warrants further investigation.