Performance of growing pigs and finisher broilers housed together

Abstract

Growth performance and cost of feeding young growing pigs and finisher broilers under integrated broiler pig production system were investigated. Four young growing pigs (the control) were housed in pen A and fed B of their body weight as commercial growers feed. Another 4 were housed in pen B with broilers in cages placed above them and given 2% of their body weight as commercial growers feed and allowed to make up with droppings from the broilers above. Another 4 were housed without broilers in pen C and given 2% of their body weight as commercial growers feed and droppings collected from broilers housed without pigs in pen D. Each pig within a treatment was tagged and regarded as a replicate. The broilers were put in the cages at week 5 and given broiler finisher feed ad libitum. They were removed at 9 weeks of age and replaced with another batch similarly raised, a process that was repeated 3 times in the 12-week trial. The growth rate of the pigs of the control group was statistically similar to that of the group housed with broilers (P>0.05) bur significantly (P<0.05) higher than that of the group housed without broilers. There were no significant differences (P>0.05) in the feed intake, growth rate and feed conversion ratio of the broilers housed with pigs and those housed without pigs. Cost analysis of the production systems showed that N104.00 was spent on feed to produce 1.0kg live weight of pigs in the control group and N65.00 for the other two groups.