Effects of Dietary Pigeon Pea (Cajanus cajan L.) Seed Meal on Growth Performance in Piglets and Growing Pigs

Abstract

To investigate the effects of dietary pigeon pea (Cajanus cajan L.) seed meal (PM) on growth performance in early life stage of pigs and whether the raw PM could be used as a plant protein resource, 32 piglets were randomly allotted into 0, 10, 20 and 30% dietary PM groups of 8 pigs (2 pigs per pen×4 replicates) at 15kg. All pigs were given ad libitum access to water and feed until they attained to the final 30kg body weight. Then, the composition of basal diet was changed from piglet diet to growing pig (30-60kg) diet. In both experimental feeding periods, feed intake, body weight gain, feeding period (day) until respective final body weights and feed conversion ratio were measured. Up to 20% PM group in growing pigs, there was no definite difference in the feed intake between each group, but the body weight gain tended to insignificantly decrease with the increasing dietary PM level, resulting in the insignificant increase of the feeding period and feed conversion ratio. However, all parameters significantly changed (P<0.05) at 30% PM level in growing pigs except in the feed conversion ratio which showed a significant difference (P<0.05) between 10 and 30% PM levels.This suggests that as a plant protein source the PM could be incorporated beyond the 30% level for piglet diet (53.4% substitution rate of PM for soybean meal) and up to the 20% level for growing pig diet (76% substitution rate of PM for soybean meal) and that the effective utilization of PM enables to reduce the feed cost in pig production.