Effect of crude fibre levels and sources on nutrient utilization and growth performance of pigs

The study was conducted to study the effect of high fibre diets containing silages of maize (MS) and vegetable waste (VS) on the performance of growing-finishing pigs. Twenty-four castrated male piglets (Hampshire X Ghungroo; about 48 days old, 8.88 ± 0.15 kg BW) were randomly allotted into three groups as normal fibre basal diet (NF-BD), high fibre maize silage (HF-MS) and high fibre vegetable waste silage (HF-VS) where pigs in NF-BD group were fed basal diet for grower (BDG) and basal diet for finisher (BDF), HF-MS group were fed maize silage diet for grower (MSG) & maize silage diet for finisher (MSF) and HF-VS group were fed vegetable waste silage diet for grower (VSG) and vegetable waste silage diet for finisher (VSF), respectively for growing and finishing phases.The basal diets BDG (6.28% CF) and BDF (8.43% CF) were prepared without silages; whereas MSG (8.17% CF) and MSF (10.31% CF) diets contained maize silage (MS) and the VSG (8.03% CF) and VSF (10.0% CF) diets contained vegetable waste silage (VS) as additional fibre sources to increase the crude fibre (CF) level. Feeding high fibre diets (8-10% CF) containing silages to growing-finishing pigs had non-significant effect on daily intake and digestibility of nutrients (P>0.05), however higher CF levels showed significant reduction in the CP intake (P<0.05) per kg W0.75 during the growing period. The N-balance was comparable (P>0.05) across the groups except for the excretion of faecal and urinary N in HF-MS and HF-VS groups, respectively during the finisher phase. Net gain and ADG were significantly higher (P<0.05) in basal and VS diet-fed groups. FCR values differed significantly (P<0.001) across the treatment groups, where HF-MS showed higher values followed by HF-VS and NF-BD groups. The cost (Rs/kg weight gain) was significantly lower in the NF-BD and HF-VS groups than in the HF-MS group. This study revealed that the pigs fed vegetable waste silage-based diet (8-10% CF) performed better than the maize silage-based diet at similar CF level and the overall production performance of crossbred pigs fed vegetable waste silage-based diet is at par with low fibre basal diet (6-8% CF).