Impacts of Wet Feeding of Diets on Growth and Carcass Traits in Pigs

Abstract

Chae, B.J. 2000. Impacts of wet feeding of diets on growth and carcass traits in pigs. J. Appl. Anim. Res., 17: 81–96. Wet feeding includes dry and wet, paste and liquid feeding. Dry and wet feeding uses a feeder, called a single space wet/dry feeder (SSWD), where feed and water are available in the same feeder. With modem SSWD feeders, growth rates were increased with meal and pelleted diets. The improvement of growth rate is largely related to the increase in voluntary feed intake and feed wastage is reduced, thus improving feed efficiency. To overcome postweaning lag from poor water and solid feed intake, liquid feeding with milk replacer has received great attention due to increased feed intake, improved growth rate and reduced mortality especially for early-weaned or light weight weaning piglets. For market pigs, liquid feeding showed some advantages in terms of feed intake and growth rate. Growth performance of piglets can be affected by the ambient temperature and weaning weight by liquid feeding of milk replacer. The dilution ratio of water to meal might be important in growing-finishing pigs. Carcass traits in terms of carcass percentage and backfat thickness are not affected by liquid feeding in modem genotype pigs.