TITLE:
Growth Performance of Butcher’s Pigs Fed on Diets Made from the Ruminal Contents of Bovine Animals
AUTHORS:
Ngouana Tadjong Ruben, Mube Kuietche Hervé, Tsafack Antoine, Kana Jean Raphaël
KEYWORDS:
Carcass Characteristics, Dried Bovine Rumen Contents, Growth Performances, Pigs
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Animal Sciences,
Vol.12 No.3,
July
5,
2022
ABSTRACT: Both quantitatively and qualitatively, underfeeding
materialized by underconsumption of meat remains one of the things most felt in
Africa. To make up for this deficit, emphasis is placed on the production of
short-cycle animals such as poultry, rabbits and pork. Among these animals, pig
plays a very important socio-economic role in the life of local populations.
Its meat is required in various ceremonies such as the dowry and funerals. For this purpose, twenty four males cross
piglets with Large White × Landrace × Duroc × Pietrain phenotypic traits, aged between 58 and 62
days and having an average weight of 9.978 ± 1.11 kg were used to evaluate the
influence of graded levels of bovine rumen
content on the growth performances of grower finisher pigs. The piglets
were submitted to 4 treatments, housed in pairs and fed ad libitum with a diet containing 0, 5%, 10% and 20% bovine
rumen content. The trial which lasted for 18 weeks was carried out at
the Teaching and Research Farm of the University of Dschang. The results showed
that drying process destroyed most microbes
found in the rumen content. These results also showed that the
incorporation of bovine rumen content in diets had no significant (p > 0.05)
effect on feed conversion ratio efficiency. However, feed intake, body weight
and body weight gain were significantly higher in pigs fed with a diet (R5)
containing 5% of bovine rumen content. Feed cost per kg of live body weight was
significantly (p 20 diet
compared to the animals receiving the control diet which was lower than that of
the other two diets (R0) and (R5) but comparable with
animals fed diet R10. The analysis of the carcass showed that
increasing incorporation level of bovine rumen content in the diet reduces
abdominal fat and back fat thickness. For offal, the lowest weight was recorded
in animals fed the control diet (R0) and the highest weight with
animals fed a diet containing 5% bovine rumen content. Carcass length of
animals fed the control diet (R0) was significantly greater compared
with the carcass of animals fed diet R10 and comparable to that of
the other two treatments. The pH of the pork was comparable (p > 0.05) in
all the treatments. In conclusion, a diet containing 5%
bovine rumen content induced the best growth performances compared to all the
other groups, while diet R20 produced lean pork with the higher
production cost.