Sunflower seed to swine on growing and finishing phase: digestibility, performance and carcass quality

Abstract

Two experiments (a digestibility and a performance tests) were carried out to evaluate sunflower seed (SS) as swine feeding on growing and finishing phases. To performance evaluation 48 pigs, with 19.78 kg liveweight were allotted to four treatments (diet without SS, 5%, 10% and diet with 20% of SS) and they were evaluated during four periods (growing I and II, finishing and total period). All animals were slaughtered and submitted to an electronic carcass evaluation at the end of the experiment. The digestible and metabolizable energy values of SS were 3234 and 3223 kcal/kg, respectively. There were regression effect (P < 0,05) on performance of the following characteristics for the levels of SS: daily feed intake (DFI): DFI(growing I) = 2066.500 - 20.990X; DFI (growing II) = 3098.470 - 36.015X; DFI (finishing) = 4114.030 + 63.420X - 6.447X2; DFI (total) = 2859.450 + 9.848X - 2.267 X2, daily weight gain (DWG): DWG (growing I) = 831.567 - 6.484X, DWG (finishing) = 964.135 + 3.350X - 1.059 X2, DWG (total) = 885.029 + 3.794X - 0.587 X2; feed gain ratio (FGR): FGR (growing II) = 3.356 - 0.025X; FGR (total) = 3.265 - 0.014X; muscle depth on carcass (MD): MD = 46.215 + 2.218X - 0.099 X2 and carcass weight (CW): CW = 75.303 - 0.464X. From the total period of the experiment, the best results to FGR were observed for rations with 20% of SS, and the best results for DWG were observed for rations with 0 and 5% of SS. Ration with 20% of SS affected negativelly the carcass weight.