Effects of dietary supplement of Enterococcus faecium or antimicrobials on growth, blood parameters and fecal microbiota of growing pigs
2009
Shidara, O.(Hyogo-ken. Technology Center for Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, Kasai (Japan)) | Kotsuna, K.
This experiment was conducted to determine the effects of dietary supplementation of probiotic Enterococcus faecium BIO-4R (EB4) and antimicrobials on growth, blood parameters and fecal microbiota of growing pigs. Forty-eight pigs whose initial and final body weight were 32 kg and 73 kg, respectively were randomly assigned to three dietary treatment groups: a no EB4 supplemental diet without dietary antimicrobial supplement (control diet), a control diet with 0.2% dietary supplement EB4 and a control diet with dietary antimicrobial supplement. Diarrhea and coughing rarely occurred in all groups. Average daily gain was not affected by treatments, but feed conversions in the EB4 diet and the antimicrobial diet groups were significantly higher (P 0.01) than the control group. All values of blood metabolites and IgG levels were normally distributed and were not affected by the treatments. Neutrophils/lymphocytes values at the final point were significantly higher (P 0.05) in the EB4 diet group than the control group. At the final point, the fecal microbiota count number in the EB4 diet group significantly decreased (P 0.05), compared with the other groups. These results suggest that feed conversion is improved in EB4-fed pigs compared to control diet-feed pigs with body weight between 30 kg and 70 kg.
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