Diets containing high-quality animal proteins increase growth of early-weaned pigs

A production experiment was conducted with 96 fourteen-day-old weaned male piglets to compare diets containing preparations of freeze-dried porcine plasma (P) and freeze-dried bovine colostrum (C) for 35 days after weaning. These diets were compared with a diet consisting of soybean meal (SP) and a diet with animal protein sources (AP). All diets contained varying proportions of bloodmeal, fishmeal, meat and bone meal, and skim milk powder. The levels of colostrum and porcine plasma were reduced from 60 g/kg to 25 g/kg after the first week of weaning. There were no effects of diet on performance in the first 4 days after weaning. However, between 18 and 21 days of age, pigs fed the SP diet ate less (P < 0.001) and grew slower (P = 0.002) than pigs fed diets containing AP, C, or P. In the second week after weaning, pigs fed diets with C and P showed a tendency to perform better (P = 0.11) than those fed AP or SP. By 35 days of age, pigs fed diets containing colostrum and plasma were, on average, 6% heavier (P = 0.037) than pigs fed the AP and SP diets. The effects of dietary protein on voluntary feed intake were most pronounced up to 28 days of age in pigs fed the SP diet. There appeared little benefit of feeding C and P to early-weaned pigs over feeding a predominantly animal protein diet, although daily gain was 6% less (P = 0. 47). There were no differences (P >0.05) in feed intake and growth rate between 28 and 35 days of age, and feed conversion efficiency was not altered by dietary protein source. Under these experimental conditions the use of bovine colostrum and a combination of animal protein sources was comparable with using freeze-dried porcine plasma in diets for early-weaned pigs. Inclusion of soybean meal in diets, however, resulted in inferior performance.