PERFORMANCE OF NURSERY PIGS FED DIETS WITH COATED OR POTENTIATED ZINC OXIDE

Abstract

 A 30-d experiment was carried out to compare the effects of two zinc oxide sources on performance of nursery pigs. Four hundred sixty-one mixed-sex weanling pigs (5.34 ± 0.16 kg) were randomly allotted to two dietary treatments. Pigs were fed basal diet added with either 500 g/ton coated zinc oxide (cZnO) or 300 g/ton potentiated zinc oxide (pZnO). Each treatment was replicated three times with 76-77 pigs per replicate. Weighing was done three times at 15-d interval. Average daily gain of pigs fed diets supplemented with pZnO tend to be higher than those fed diets supplemented with cZnO at d 1-15 (0.16 vs 0.11 kg; p=0.09), d 16-30 (0.53 vs .41 kg; p=0.05), and at d 1-30 (0.34 vs 0.26 kg; p=0.06). There were no differences on ADFI (p=0.43) for each feeding phase and for the overall period. Feed conversion ratio (FCR) at d 1-15 did not differ between treatments (p=0.12), but pigs fed diets with pZnO improved by 22.07% at d 16-30 (1.73 vs 2.22; p=0.07) and for the overall period by 25.40% (1.88 vs 2.52; p=0.07). Furthermore, mortality was lower in pigs fed diets with pZnO (6.57 vs 15.86 %; p=0.01) than those fed with cZnO. Results indicated the advantages of pZnO over cZnO on growth and survivability of pigs.