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5. The effect of graded levels of palm oil on performance traits

Authors: Chhayty,  Preston T R,   Ly J and Keo Sath 2003.

Livestock Research for Rural Development (15) 9 Retrieved, from http://www.cipav.org.co/lrrd/lrrd15/9/chha159.htm

Summary : This experiment was carried out in the ecological farm of the University of Tropical Agriculture Foundation (UTAF), located in Chamcar Daung, at the outskirts of Phnom Penh City , Cambodia , from 16 June to 3 October 2002. The temperature in the area was about 35 ºC in the middle of the day during the experiment. Eight female and eight castrated male crossbred (Mong Cai*Large Wite) pigs with an average initial body weight of 16.0 kg (females) and 12.0 kg (males) were allocated to a 4*2 factorial arrangement to study the effects of level of supplementary crude palm oil (0, 5, 10 and 15%) and sex. The pigs were housed in individual pens of 1.2m x 1.4m. The pens had a concrete floor with brick walls and were provided with feeders and drinking nipples. The pigs were vaccinated against Salmonella and Swine cholera disease. The pigs were adapted to the feeds and the housing for a 14 day period before starting the experiment. The pigs were allocated to 2 blocks according to sex and body weight. The nutritional treatments were applied at random within each block. The diets were formulated to contain 16% crude protein (N*6.25) in dry basis, with cassava leaf silage as the main protein source and a low level of fish meal to compensate for the low methionine content of the cassava leaves. Cassava leaves were harvested from 4 to 5 month-old cassava plants grown for root production in farmers' fields in Kandal province. The cassava leaves (after removing stems and petioles) were sun-dried for half a day before being chopped into small pieces and ensiled with 5% sugar palm syrup and stored in sealed plastic containers for 30 days before feeding. Crude palm oil was bought from the Palm oil plantation in Sihanouk Ville, Cambodia . The supplements (crude palm oil, broken rice, mineral/vitamin premix, sugar palm and fish meal) were mixed together with the cassava leaf silage before feeding. The pigs were adapted to the diet and pen for two weeks and thereafter were fed the test diets divided in 3 meals daily. The pigs were weighed every week. Individual feed intake was recorded daily from weight of fresh material offered minus the residue collected the next morning. Feed conversion ratio was calculated from individual daily DM intake and live weight gain. Feed samples were taken weekly, dried and bulked prior to taking sub-samples for chemical analysis.

Abstract : Sixteen Mong Cai*Large White female and castrate male pigs weighing on average 16 and 12 kg, respectively, were used in a 4*2 factorial arrangement to study the effect of graded levels of crude palm oil (0, 5, 10 and 15%) and sex (castrate male or female) on performance traits with a basal diet formulated with cassava leaf silage, fish meal and broken rice. The pigs were housed in individual pens and allotted at random to the four experimental diets. The feeding trial lasted for 16 weeks (112 days) and was analysed according to three periods (0-8; 9-16 and overall 0-16 weeks). There was no significant interaction between treatment and sex. Voluntary DM intake tended to increase with level of palm oil and to be less for castrate male pigs than for females. Level of palm oil had no effect on daily live weight gain but tended to improve the feed conversion ratio. There appear to be no advantages in terms of pig growth and feed conversion from adding up to 15% palm oil in a diet based on ensiled cassava leaves as the main protein source.

 

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