Journal of Animal Science and Technology
Korean Society of Animal Science and Technology
Article

Effect of various levels of milk by-products on growth performance, blood profiles, and intestinal morphology of weaned pigs

Byeong-Ock Kim1, Sungho Do1, Jae-Hark Jeong2, Jae-Cheol Jang2, Yoo Yong Kim1,*
1Department of Agricultural Biotechnology and Research Institute of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Seoul National University, Seoul 08826, Korea.
2Division of Animal Science, College of Agricultural Life Sciences, Gyeong Sang National University, Jinju-si, Gyeongsangnam-do 52725, Korea.
*Corresponding Author: Yoo Yong Kim, Department of Agricultural Biotechnology and Research Institute of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Seoul National University, Seoul 08826, Korea, Republic of. E-mail: yooykim@snu.ac.kr.

© Copyright 2024 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.

Received: Feb 13, 2023; Revised: Aug 09, 2023; Accepted: Mar 05, 2024

Published Online: Mar 08, 2024

Abstract

This experiment was conducted to evaluate various levels of milk by-products in weaned pig’s diet on growth performance, blood profiles, diarrhea incidence, and intestinal morphology of weaned pigs. A total of 160 weaned pigs ([Yorkshire × Landrace] × Duroc), average 5.97 ± 1.53 kg body weight (BW), were allotted to 1 of 4 treatments in 5 replications with 8 pigs per pen by BW. Pigs were fed each treatment diet with various levels of milk by-products (phase 1: 5, 10, 20 or 30%; phase 2: 0, 5, 10 or 15%) for 5 weeks. Linear increase of BW, average daily gain, average daily feed intake, and gain to feed ratio with increasing milk by-products was observed in whole experimental period (linear response, <italic>p </italic>&lt; 0.05). In blood profiles, however, there were no differences in blood urea nitrogen, insulin like growth factor 1, and immunoglobulin A and G among the treatments. In addition, no differences were found in diarrhea incidence and intestinal morphology. In conclusion Increasing milk by-product content in the diets of weaned pigs improved growth performance but high or low level of milk by-product content did not negatively affect blood profiles, diarrhea incidence, and gut health of nursery pigs.

Keywords: Milk by-products; Weaned pigs; Growth performance; Blood profiles; Intestinal morphology