Abstract 627

[Determination of the optimum protein level to utilize African Palm byproduct as an energy source for fattening pigs]

Alvaro Ocampo Durán, Clara E. Castro, Luis C. Alfonso

Universidad del Llano, Facultad de Medicina Veterinaria y Zootecnia, Departamento de producción Animal. AA 3358, Villavicencio, Colombia.

Livestock Research for Rural Development 1990 2(2): 67-76.

A feeding trial was carried out on a commercial pig farm located in Villavicencio - Meta, 400 m above sea level, 24?C average temperature, 70% relative humidity and 3500 mm anual rainfall.

Fourty pigs, commercial crosses of Yorkshire and Landrace with equal numbers of males and females, of average liveweight 20 kg, were distributed at ramdom into four groups. The basal diet was ad libitum oil palm residue (23% oil, 5% N x 6.25, 15% fibre). The treatments were different amounts of fortified soyabean meal (FSM) (98.6% soyabean meal plus minerals and vitamins) as follows: T0 (control) 0.50, 0.64 and 0.9 kg/d FSM in the three phases of rearing, growth and fattening respectively; Th, Tm and Tl received amounts of 0.64, 0.57 and 0.50 kg/d of FSM given uniformly throughout the three phases of the fattening cycle.

For the total cycle (22 to 90 kg), the treatment with best performance was T0 (558 g/d) followed by Tm, Th and Tl with 545, 532 and 505 g/d, with no significative difference between the treatments. The highest intake of oil palm residue was on Tl (2.566 kg/d) followed by Th, T0 and Tm with 2.45, 2.33 and 2.23 kg/d, respectively.

The conclusion from this experiment is that when the basal diet is low in protein, and the greater part of the required amino acids have to be supplied by soybean meal, then much lower levels of total protein are required (200 g/animal/d throughout the growth-fattening cycle) compared with when cereal grain diets are used. This permits considerable savings in costs and makes it economically viable to use byproducts such as oil palm residue as the basis of pig production systems.