Nutritive Values of Chinese Peanut Meal for Growing-Finishing Pigs

Two experiments were conducted to determine the apparent ileal digestibility of the amino acids contained in peanut meal using the regression technique and then applying the values obtained, in a growth trial, using growing-finishing pigs. For the digestibility trial, four 20 kg crossbred (Yorkshire${\times}$Landrace${\times}$Beijing Black) barrows were fitted with simple T-cannula in the terminal ileum. After recovery, the barrows were fed one of four experimental diets according to a $4{\times}4$ Latin Square design. The pigs were fed corn-soybean meal based diets supplemented with 0, 25, 50 or 75% peanut meal. For the growth trial, 200 crossbred (Yorkshire${\times}$Landrace${\times}$Beijing Black) growing pigs (20.9 kg) were fed corn-soybean meal diets supplemented with 0, 5, 10, 15 or 20% peanut meal. Five pens (4 gilts and 4 castrates) were assigned to each treatment. With the exception of arginine, histidine and phenylalanine, the digestibility coefficients for the indispensible amino acids declined as the level of peanut meal in the diet increased. There was a good agreement between the amino acid digestibilities for lysine, methionine, threonine and tryptophan determined using the regression technique and amino acid digestibilities previously published for peanut meal. During both the growing (21-54 kg) and finishing (54-99 kg) periods, the addition of peanut meal decreased average daily gain (p=0.01) and feed conversion in a linear manner (p<0.05). Feed intake was not significantly different among treatments. The overall results suggest that peanut meal can be used at levels up to 15% in diets fed to growing-finishing pigs provided that the diet has been balanced for digestible amino acids.