PSIII-26 Effect of Yea-Sacc® yeast culture on growth performance, nutrient digestibility and fecal score in weanling pigs.

Abstract

Multiple challenges during the transition phase can lead the piglets are deprived of growth, reduce feed efficiency and immune functions. In recent years, yeast culture has been used to weanling piglets as an alternative antimicrobial growth promoter. The influence of dietary supplementation with yeast culture on growth performance, fecal score and nutrient digestibility was evaluated in weaned pigs in a 6-week feeding trial. A total of 50 weaning pigs with an initial average body weight (BW) of 7.46 ± 1.60 kg were randomly allotted into 1 of 2 dietary treatments according to initial BW. There were 5 replicate pens in each treatment with 5 pigs per pen. The dietary treatments included: 1) control, basal diet (CON); 2) 0.10% yeast culture (Saccharomyces cerevisiae), basal diet supplemented with 0.1% yeast culture (YC). Duncan’s multiple range test was used to compare the means of increasing yeast culture levels on the treatments. The average daily feed intake was significantly improved with the dietary supplementation of yeast culture compared with control during phases 1 (CON: 391, YC: 425) and 3 (CON: 901, YC: 937). At the overall (0 to 6 weeks), dietary supplementation with 0.1% yeast culture had significant effect on gain to feed ratio (G/F) (CON: 0.652, YC: 0.64). There was no significant difference in the fecal score between CON and YC dietary treatments. In addition, no difference on apparent total tract digestibility was observed between CON and YC dietary treatments. Collectively, the results of this study indicate that dietary supplementation of 0.1% yeast only improved feed intake of weaning pigs, but there were no effects of yeast culture supplementation on average daily gain, feed efficiency, total tract digestibility of dry matter, nitrogen and energy,as well as fecal scores.