The effect of fish meal in the nutrition of weaned piglets

Abstract

The effects of the use of fish meal in the nutrition of weaning piglets were observed. The trial included 80 weaned piglets of the same genotype (Large White x Danish Landrace) distributed in two feeding treatments. In the first period of the experiment, animals were fed during 10 feeding days, with a pre-starter mixture containing 21.1/20.8% of the crude protein. The second period lasted for 25 days and piglets were fed with mixture containing also 21.0/21.1% of the crude protein. And in the final period of the experiment, which lasted 22 feeding days, the meals were formulated to contain 19.5/19.9% of the crude protein. The control group was fed with standard farm mixtures, while the trial group were fed with mixtures containing 4/3/2% of fish meal. The obtained results showed that the use of fish meal resulted in better average daily gain and feed conversion in starter period (27-51 day).