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Dietary carbohydrase mixture supplementation and fiber levels on ileal digestibility of nutrients in diets for gestating sows

Shipman, G., J. Perez-Palencia, R. Patterson and C. Levesque
2023

Supplementation of multi-carbohydrase enzyme cocktails can increase nutrient digestibility of fibrous diets in grower pigs, particularly acting on dietary non-starch polysaccharides (NSP). Although NSP degrading enzymes are extensively used in sow diets, there is little data characterizing the NSP enzyme effects. Our previous work demonstrated a 10% increase in nutrient digestibility in diets fed to gestating sows. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of a carbohydrase mixture (CM) and dietary fiber level on standardized ileal digestibility (SID) of protein and amino acids (AA) and apparent ileal digestibility (AID) of NSP in gestation diets fed to pregnant sows. Ileal cannulas were placed in 12 gestating sows (parity 0 to 2) who were allowed to recover for 1 week, then assigned to either a high (HF; 17.5% NDF) or low fiber (LF; 10% NDF) diet with one of 3 levels of CM supplementation (0, 0.08, and 0.10%) or a nitrogen-free diet to determine ileal endogenous AA losses. Diets were corn-soybean meal based with soyhulls and corn DDGS as fiber sources and formulated to reflect industry-relevant diets. Thus, oil was included at 3% in HF to maintain similar formulated metabolizable energy content. Sows were fed once daily at 2.2 kg/d. Ileal digesta samples were collected for 12h on 2 successive days following a 7-day adaption period. At the end of digesta collection, sows were assigned a different diet in a new adaptation/digesta collection period. There were 5 collection periods for a total of 8 observations/diet. Digesta was analyzed for crude protein, amino acids, NSP, and titanium as the indigestible marker to determine AID and SID. There was no interaction between diet fiber level and CM supplementation. Carbohydrase mixture supplementation to gestating sow diets did not impact SID of crude protein and AA regardless of dietary fiber level. The SID of His, Ile, Lys, Phe, Thr, Trp, and Val were 3 to 6% lower (P < 0.09) in HF than LF independent of CM. There was no impact of fiber level on the average SID of amino acids in gestating sow diets which was 83.5%. Supplementation of CM did not impact AID of NSP components, but sows fed HF had higher AID of arabinose (LF: 26.5% vs HF: 40.6%), xylose (LF: 3.5% vs HF: 40.9%), and total NSP (LF: 25.9% vs HF: 40.0%) compared to sows fed LF (P < 0.05).

Inclusion of CM in high fibrous gestating sow diets did not increase the SID of AA or AID of NSP, but a high fiber gestation diet reduced SID of AA. As such, differences in SID of AA should be considered when formulating high fibrous diets for gestating sows.