A comparison between meals prepared from the seeds of different varieties of lupin as protein supplements to barley-based diets for growing pigs

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Four experiments were conducted in order to examine the growth and voluntary feed consumption of young growing pigs fed on barley-based diets containing as the sole protein supplement lupin-seed meal (LSM) from either Lupinus angustifolius cv. Uniwhite (UW), Uniharvest (UH) or L. albus cv. Neuland (NL). Under the restricted feeding regimen of the first experiment pigs receiving diets containing either 31% or 43% of either UW or UH grew at similar rates and with similar efficiency of feed utilisation from 27.5 to 85 kg live weight. By contrast, all pigs fed on diets containing these same proportions of NL refused such large amounts of feed immediately after the diets were offered that their growth halted. In the second and third experiments the voluntary feed consumption of pigs weighing 18 to 34 kg and receiving diets containing 37 to 43% of any of three distinct lines of NL was significantly less than those of pigs receiving UW diets, to the extent in some cases that body-weight loss occurred. In the fourth experiment the growth and voluntary feed intakes of 20 to 30 kg pigs fed on a control diet containing a mixture of fishmeal and dried blood as the protein supplement were greater than those of pigs fed a UW diet, which in turn were greater than those of pigs receiving NL as the source of supplementary protein. Reduction of the alkaloid content of NL by ethanol extraction resulted in a recovery of growth and feed intake to levels similar to those supported by the UW diet.