Abstract
ABSTRACT Corn is one of the primary ingredients in swine diets, but there is a variation in its chemical composition and metabolizable energy (ME) content. Therefore, faster methods are required that can determine more accurate ME values to improve piglet diets. This study determined and predicted the ME of corn from first and second harvests for piglets. Two experiments were conducted to determine the ME values for 18 corn batches, evaluating corn from first and second harvests. The corn batches were analysed to determine the concentration of dry matter (DM), starch (ST), neutral detergent fiber (NDF), acid detergent fiber (ADF), crude protein (CP), ether extract (EE), ash, calcium (Ca), phosphorus (P) and gross energy (GE). To determine the ME values, 40 piglets were used in each experiment, grouped into a randomized block design with four replicates. The ME of the corn from the first and second crops ranged from 3281 to 3509 and from 3143 to 3652 kcal/kg on an as-fed basis, respectively, and the fitted equations to predict the ME presented a low R2. The best fit equation for predicting the ME of corn for piglets was determined to be ME= - 6306.15 + 400.652ADF + 117.286ST + 24924.7Ca + 2489.66P - 148.41CP (R2=0.44) for the first harvest; ME= -7560.08 + 2.66895GE - 120.69ADF (R2=0.48) for the second harvest; and ME= 2848.95 + 68.5714NDF + 161.938EE - 5563.5Ca - 1454.2P (R2=0.41) for the joint harvest.
Highlights
Corn is one of the primary ingredients in swine diets worldwide, as it is grown in many locations and has a higher nutritional value than other feeds
The concentrations of dry matter (DM), neutral detergent fiber (NDF), acid detergent fiber (ADF), crude protein (CP), ether extract (EE), ash and phosphorus (P) were determined per the methods described by Silva and Queiroz (2012)
Different ranges in the variation and average values were observed for the ST concentration based on the assessed harvests (Table 1), with a coefficient of variation (CV) at 1.30% and 0.90% for the first and second harvests, respectively
Summary
Corn is one of the primary ingredients in swine diets worldwide, as it is grown in many locations and has a higher nutritional value than other feeds. The ME from pig feed is usually obtained from feed composition tables (NRC, 2012; Rostagno et al, 2017); these tables show the average values from several studies. An adequate knowledge of feed ME is required to formulate efficient pig diets, and this can be determined by both direct and indirect methods. The direct method requires a calorimeter and a metabolic assay and is laborious, time-consuming and expensive. The prediction equation is an indirect method based on a proximal composition of the feed ingredients routinely obtained from laboratories and is a quick and economical alternative to the nutritional assessment (Zonta et al, 2006)
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