The Effects of Feeding Graded Levels of Wheat Offals And Groundnut Shells To Pigs On Their Performance And Carcass Characteristics And Nutrient Utilization

Abstract

A TOTAL of 70 weaner pigs were used in these studies designed to study the effects of feeding graded levels of wheat offals and groundnut shells in the diets of pigs on their performance characteristics, carcass quality and nutrient utilization abilities. They were all of the Yorkshire and Yorkshire x Landrace crosses, and were reared from about 25 kg to approximately 92 kg liveweight on diets containing 5, 10 and 15% of wheat offals or groundnut shells compared with the control diet which contained neither of these. All the diets were roughly iso nitrogenous, containing about 20% protein.  All pigs on the graded levels of the fibre sources gained more than those on the control diet, consumed more feed and higher digestible energy daily and had inconsistently better feed/gain ratios, but the differences were not significant. Pigs on the ground nut shell diets also gained more weight daily, consumed more feed and digestible energy, but had poorer efficiencies of feed and energy utilization than those on the wheat offals diets, but the differences were also not significant for the three weight categories covered. Generally, feed intake slightly increased, digestible energy intake slightly decreased, while the other response parameters were not consistently affected by the increases in the levels of fibre inclusion. The carcass measurements were not significantly influenced by the levels of fibre inclusion, and there were no definite trends in nearly all the carcass measurements as the fibre levels increased, but there were significant differences due to sources in most of the carcass parameters. Most of the nutrients were significantly depressed in their utilization by the fibre levels and sources.