Effect of feather meal on barrow performance

Area of Science:

• Animal Science
• Swine Nutrition
• Feed Ingredient Evaluation

Background:

• Feather meal (FM) is a protein source for animal feed.
• Understanding FM's impact on swine performance is crucial for feed formulation.
• Growth performance and carcass characteristics are key metrics in swine production.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the effect of dietary feather meal (FM) on barrow performance, specifically average daily gain (ADG) and carcass leanness.
• To compare gender differences in performance between barrows and gilts on control diets.
• To determine the influence of different starting weights and FM inclusion levels on barrow growth and carcass traits.

Main Methods:

• 196 crossbred barrows and 28 gilts were used in the experiment.
• Barrows were fed diets with 10% or 20% FM, initiated at 36, 60, or 86 kg body weight (BW).
• Diets were formulated to meet specific apparent digestible lysine and metabolizable energy (ME) levels.

Main Results:

• Control barrows exhibited higher feed intake, faster growth, greater backfat depth, and lower carcass lean content than gilts.
• Increasing FM levels linearly decreased ADG when initiated at 36 kg BW, but not when initiated later.
• FM inclusion quadratically reduced feed intake and digestible lysine intake in the 36-60 kg BW period for barrows starting FM at 36 kg BW.

Conclusions:

• Dietary feather meal (10-20%) effectively reduced ADG and ADFI in barrows when introduced at 36 kg BW.
• Starting weight significantly influenced the impact of FM on barrow growth performance.
• Feather meal inclusion did not affect final backfat depth, but initiated at 36 kg BW, it resulted in greater backfat than control gilts.