Effects of feeding a high canola meal diet with multi-carbohydrase supplementation on growth performance and intestinal ecology of nursery pigs

The objective was to investigate the effects of high dietary canola meal and multi-carbohydrase supplementation on growth performance, intestinal pH, volatile fatty acid (VFA) profile, and microbial relative abundance in weaned pigs. Twenty-four pigs (7.46 ± 0.23 kg) were individually assigned to one of three diets in a completely randomized design. Diets were fed for 21 days and consisted of SB, corn–soybean meal-based diet; CM, 25% canola meal substituting soybean meal and adjusted to meet energy and nutrient requirements of pigs; and CM + E, CM supplemented with multi-carbohydrase (0.01%). There were no differences in growth performance, digesta pH, and VFA profile among experimental diets, except for a tendency toward lower cecal butyric acid ( P = 0.051) and colonic isovaleric acid concentrations ( P = 0.080) in pigs fed the CM + E diet than the CM diet. Pigs fed SB had a lower ( P < 0.05) abundance of Bifidobacteria and Enterobacteriaceae than fed CM. Pigs fed CM + E had a lower ( P < 0.05) abundance of Bifidobacteria, but a higher ( P < 0.05) abundance of Lactobacillus than fed CM. In conclusion, feeding CM with or without multi-carbohydrase supplementation changed the intestinal environment by modifying the microbiome profile, but without affecting growth performance in nursery pigs.