Effect of Dietary Sugar Beet Pulp Supplementation on Growth Performance, Nutrient Digestibility, Fecal Microflora, Blood Profiles and Diarrhea Incidence in Weaning Pigs

Background: In 2006, the European Union (EU) has decided to forbid use of antibiotics as growth promoters. Although many researches had been conducted about fiber source as alternatives of antibiotics, there are still lack of reports in the literature about the optimum level of sugar beet pulp supplementation, affecting growth performance and nutrient digestibility in weaning pigs. Therefore, different level of sugar beet pulp was added to diets to determine the effects of sugar beet pulp supplementation on growth performance, nutrient digestibility, fecal microflora, blood profile and incidence of diarrhea in weaning pigs.

Methods: A total of 200 weaning pigs [(Yorkshire × Landrace) × Duroc], averaging 9.01 ± 1.389 kg of initial body weight were, allotted to 5 treatments in a randomized complete block (RCB) design. Each treatment was composed of 4 replicates with 10 pigs per pen. The treatments were control treatment: Corn-SBM basal diet + ZnO (phase 1: 0.05%; phase 2; 0.03%) and four different levels of sugar beet pulp were supplemented in Corn-SBM basal diet (3, 6, 9 or 12%). Two phase feeding programs (phase 1: 1-2 weeks; phase 2: 3-5 weeks) were used for 5 week of growth trial.

Results: In feeding trial, there were no significant differences in growth performance and incidence of diarrhea among treatments. The counts were not significantly different among dietary treatments but linear response was observed in counts as sugar beet pulp supplementation increased ( < 0.05). In addition, IGF-1, IgA and IgG were not affected by dietary treatments. However, the BUN concentration was decreased when pigs were fed the treatments of diets with SBP compared to that of control treatment ( < 0.05). In nutrient digestibility, crude fiber and NDF digestibilities were improved as the sugar beet pulp increased ( < 0.05). However, digestibilities of crude ash, crude fat, crude fiber and nitrogen retention were not affected by dietary sugar beet pulp levels.

Conclusion: This experiment demonstrated that sugar beet pulp can be supplemented in weaning pigs' diet instead of ZnO to prevent postweaning diarrhea without any detrimental effect on growth performance.