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Dietary supplementation of some vitamins above the NRC requirement estimates, such as vitamin E, vitamin C and vitamin B, have been reported to enhance immune response in weanling pigs in some studies; however, in other studies, growth performance of weanling pigs were not influenced by these vitamins at the same dietary levels. After this controversy, the present study hypothesized that increasing dietary vitamin supplementation would improve growth performance and carcass characteristics of pigs. The objectives of this study were: to 1) determine if increasing supplementation of a routine vitamin premix (VP) containing 11 vitamins affects growth performance and carcass characteristics of weanling to finishing pigs and 2) determine if increasing supplementation of a specific subset of 5 B-vitamins (niacin, riboflavin, folacin, pantothenic acid, and vitamin B12) affects growth performance and carcass characteristics of nursery to finishing pigs. A total of three experiments involving a total of 405 crossbred pigs were performed. A common vitamin premix (VP) that provided adequate amounts of vitamins (4 fat-soluble and 7 B vitamins), was added at varied levels in Exp. 1 and 2. Experiment 1 used 125 weanling pigs with initial body weight (BW) of 7.5±0.2 kg. Dietary treatments were basal diet with increasing levels of VP (0.00%, 0.05%, 0.10%, 0.25%, and 0.50%, respectively). The experimental diets were fed for 28d in a single phase. It was observed that average daily gain (ADG) and average daily feed intake (ADFI) were linearly increased (P<0.005) with increasing VP levels during d 14–21, d 21–28, and the overall 28-d period. Experiment 2 used 100 crossbred pigs with initial BW of 49.4±1.0 kg. Dietary treatments were basal diet with 0.05%, 0.10%, and 0.15% added VP. The experimental diets were fed for 67 d in a single phase. It was observed that the increasing VP levels did not affect growth performance or carcass characteristics of grower to finisher pigs. Experiment 3 was designed to evaluate the effects of increasing dietary supplementation of 5 B vitamins (niacin, riboflavin, folacin, pantothenic acid, and vitamin B12) on growth performance and carcass characteristics of nursery-finisher pigs. A total of 180 weanling pigs were provided a common diet without supplementation of the test B vitamins until they reached an average BW of 10 kg. Then, 155 pigs were selected for allotment. The experimental diets were fed in 3 phases corresponding to 10–20 kg, 20–50 kg, and 50–105 kg of BW, respectively; the 5 B vitamins were provided to be equivalent to 70%, 170%, 270%, 470%, and 870% of the NRC requirement estimates on a bioavailable basis for each BW phase. The results demonstrated that overall ADG and gain to feed ratio (G:F) increased quadratically (P<0.05), while overall ADFI tended to increase linearly (P = 0.10) as dietary B vitamins increased. The loin depth, loin eye area, and lean gain improved with increasing B vitamin levels (quadratic, P<0.05).
It may be concluded that increasing supplementation of VP beyond NRC requirement estimates improved ADG and ADFI of nursery pigs while supplementing a subset of 5 B vitamins improved growth performance and carcass characteristics of grower to finisher pigs.
J.H. Cho, N. Lu, M.D. Lindemann (2017). Effects of vitamin supplementation on growth performance and carcass characteristics in pigs. Livestock Science 204 (2017) 25–32. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.livsci.2017.08.007
