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Butyrate has been widely used in animal production to improve animal growth performance and feed utilization efficiency. In weaned piglet diets, the supplementation with sodium butyrate improves performance, intestinal development and digestibility. However, the information about growth performance and intestinal health of growing and finishing pigs has rarely been reported. Therefore, this experiment is to investigate the effects of dietary sodium butyrate on growth performance, carcass traits and intestinal health of growing-finishing pigs. Thirty pigs (27.4 ± 0.4 kg) were randomly assigned to receive one of three diets: basal diet (negative control group); basal diet + 40 ppm zinc bacitracin (positive control group); and basal diet + 0.2% sodium butyrate (sodium butyrate group) for 69 days. The performance was measured by the average daily body weight gain, feed conversion ratio, backfat thickness and carcass yield (carcass weight/live body weight). Additionally, blood samples, caecum content and jejunum mucosa were analysed.
The results indicate that compared to the control group, final body weight, average daily gain, and feed intake of pigs in the sodium butyrate group were increased and feed conversion ratio was decreased. Carcass weight of pigs in the sodium butyrate group was higher than that of pigs in the negative and positive groups; backfat thickness of pigs in the positive group was higher than that of pigs in the negative group and sodium butyrate group. When compared to the negative and positive groups, pigs fed diet supplemented with sodium butyrate showed an increased relative abundance of Bacteroidetes in the caecum and a decreased relative abundance of Fiemicutes and Proteobacteria in the caecum. The villus height and villus height/crypt depth ratio in sodium butyrate group was higher than these of pigs in groups of negative control and positive control.
The results indicated that dietary sodium butyrate supplementation increased growth performance of growing-finishing pigs and improved the carcass traits and intestinal health.
Sun W, Sun J, Li M, Xu Q, Zhang X, Tang Z, Chen J, Zhen J, Sun Z. The effects of dietary sodium butyrate supplementation on the growth performance, carcass traits and intestinal microbiota of growing‐finishing pigs. Journal of Applied Microbiology. 2020;128(6): 1613-1623. https://doi.org/10.1111/jam.14612
