Methionine supplementation of weaner pig diets containing lupin-seed meal

Abstract

Abstract An experiment was conducted to measure the growth and feed intake responses of young growing pigs to the addition of methionine hydroxy analogue (MHA 0.1 and 0.2%) to barley-based diets containing as the sole protein supplement lupin-seed meal (LSM) from either Lupinus angustifolius cv. ‘Uniwhite’ (UW) or L. albus cv. ‘Neuland’ (NL). Growth rate and voluntary feed intake of pigs fed on a control diet, which contained a mixture of fishmeai and dried blood as the protein supplement, were greater than those of pigs fed on the UW diets, which in turn were significantly greater than those of pigs receiving NL in their diet. The addition of 0.1% MHA to either the UW or NL diets improved both rate and efficiency of gain. Further addition of MHA to each diet depressed growth and efficiency of feed utilisation to levels similar to those supported by the unsupplemented diets. The amplitude of these parabolic responses was greater for the NL diets than for the UW diets, which suggested that the beneficial e...