Article

Effects of dietary supplementation of illite on growth performance, nutrient digestibility, and meat-carcass grade quality of growing-finishing pigs

madesh muniyappan, Sureshkumar Shanmugam, In Ho Kim*
Author Information & Copyright
1Department of Animal Resource & Science, Dankook University, , Cheonan-si, Chungnam 31116, Korea.
*Corresponding Author: In Ho Kim, E-mail: inhokim@dankook.ac.kr.

© Copyright 2023 Korean Society of Animal Science and Technology. This is an Open-Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

This study investigated the impact of clay mineral ‘illite’ (IL) on the growth performance, apparent total tract digestibility, and meat-carcass grade quality in growing-finishing pigs. One hundred fifty pigs were divided into two groups with fifteen pens/group and five pigs/pen, a control group that was fed with a corn-soybean meal-based diet and illite treated group were fed a meal-based diet supplemented with 0.5% illite.  Compared to the control, IL supplementation increased average daily feed intake (ADFI) and reduce G: F in the pigs during days 43 to 70 and 99 to 126 and increased dry matter during days 42 and 126, and backfat thickness on day 98 (P < 0.05). The drip loss was reduced on day 7, meat firmness tended to increase with dietary IL supplementation. In summary, dietary 0.5% IL supplementation improved ADFI, nutrient utilization of dry matter, and firmness and reduced G: F and drip loss of growing-finishing pigs.

Keywords: Backfat thickness,; Growing-finishing pigs; Growth performance; Meat quality,; Illite,; Nutrient digestibility