Date of Award

3-20-2014

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Department of Agriculture

First Advisor

Peter J. Lammers

Abstract

Nursery pigs are defined as newly weaned pigs adjusting to a solid-plant based diet after being weaned from a milk-based diet. Weaning has nutritional, environmental, social, and physiological impacts on the nursery pig. Nutrition is modified to accommodate changing needs of the nursery pig. The nursery pig diet is developed by adding highly digestible animal proteins to the standard corn-soybean meal swine diet. Development of the nursery diet improves pig performance but animal-based proteins can be expensive and do not address undigestible components of the plant-based ingredients. Addition of lower-cost animal proteins, addition of enzymes, and addition of acidifiers have the capability to improve nutrient utilization of corn-soybean meal diets by nursery pigs at a lower cost. This thesis consists of four chapters. Chapter one consists of a literature review examining nursery pig management and nutrition in the United States swine industry. Chapter two examines the effectiveness of independent addition of spray-dried blood plasma or spray-dried egg to improve nursery pig growth performance when added to the standard nursery diet. Chapter three examines the effectiveness of the independent and joint addition of α-galactosidase and citric acid to improve nursery pig growth performance when added to a corn-soybean meal diet. Chapter four summarizes the findings of Ch two and three and the implications of these findings for the swine industry.

Comments

Imported from ProQuest Pegg_ilstu_0092N_10178.pdf

DOI

http://doi.org/10.30707/ETD2014.Pegg.E

Page Count

117

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