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Seventy-two individually housed, entire male (Large White X Landrace) weaner pigs (28 days; 7.4 ± 0.4 kg) were used in a 26-day feeding trial. The pigs were allocated to one of six treatments in a 3 by 2 factorial design. The factors were (1) steeping duration of liquid feed [0 (dry control diet), 1 or 24 h], and (2) enzyme supplementation (0 or 300 ppm xylanase). The basal diet was wheat-based (65%) and was formulated to be marginally adequate for pigs of this age, containing 14.5 MJ digestible energy (DE)/kg and 0.85 g available lysine/MJ DE. Feeding pigs liquid diets steeped for 1 h increased feed intake (61 g/day; s.e.d. 17; P < 0.05) and daily gain (70 g/day; s.e.d. 17; P < 0.05) and improved feed conversion ratio (1.16 versus 1.22; s.e.d. 0.03; P < 0.05) compared with pigs fed dry diets. Performance was not further improved by steeping for 24 h. The addition of xylanase to the diets had no positive effect on any of the performance measures and was associated with a significant (40 g/day; s.e.d. 14; P < 0.05) reduction in feed intake. These results provide no support for supplementing liquid diets for weaner pig diets with xylanase. |
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