Effects of Expander Conditioning of Complex Nursery Diets on Growth Performance of Weanling Pigs

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Three experiments were conducted to determine the effects of conditioning a complex (20% whey, 10% lactose, 4% plasma protein, 4% wheat gluten and 2% blood meal) diet on growth performance of weanling pigs. In Exp. 1,180 pigs (average initial BW of 6.4 kg) were fed the experimental diet (1.7% lysine) during a 7-d growth assay. Treatments were a meal control (M), standard (ST), and expander (EX) conditioned mash or pellets. Rate and efficiency of gain were decreased by 39% and 21% (p<0.005) respectively, for pigs fed EX diets compared to those fed the ST diet. In Exp. 2,196 pigs (average initial BW of 6.5 kg) were used to determine the effects of EX operating conditions on nutritional value of a pelleted complex diet. When steam conditioning temperature (prior to expanding) was $54^{\circ}C$, increasing cone pressure of the EX from 0 to 7 to 14 kg/cm2 resulted in linear decreases in rate of gain of weaned pigs (p<0.006), suggesting heat damage of the diet. Increasing conditioning temperature (i.e., adding steam) of the diets from 46 to 54 to $63^{\circ}C$ (cone pressure at $12kg/cm^2$) resulted in improved rate of gain (p<0.04) of the pigs. However, none of the pigs fed expanded diets compared favorably to the pigs fed the conditioned $(54^{\circ}C)$ pellets processed with no cone pressure. In Exp. 3,168 pigs (average initial BW of 6.6 kg) were used to determine the effects of expanding the various components of the diet. Treatments were M and ST pellets as controls, EX-corn, EX-corn soybean-meal, EX corn-soybean meal-oil, and EX-complete diet. Efficiency of gain was increased by 13% with EX portions of the diet compared to the mash control, but there was a marked decrease in performance when the complete diet was expanded (p<0.001). Expanded corn-soybean meal-oil supported the greatest ADG with a 19% increase compared to the average of the EX corn and EX corn-soybean meal treatments (p<0.005). In conclusion, our results suggest no benefit from expanding complete phase-I diets.