PSVII-3 Nutritional Value of a New Source of Cheese Co-Product Fed to Weanling Pigs

Two experiments were conducted to test the hypothesis that the standardized ileal digestibility (SID) of AA, and metabolizable energy (ME) are greater in a new source of cheese co-product (Keys Manufacturing Co., Inc.) than in fish-meal or enzyme-treated soybean meal (ESBM). The second hypothesis was that cheese co-product can replace spray dried plasma (SDP) or ESBM in diets for weanling pigs. In Exp 1, eight ileal-cannulated weanling barrows (11.0 ± 0.4 kg) were allotted to a repeated 4 × 4 Latin-square with 4 diets (cheese co-product, fish meal, ESBM, N-free) and four 7-d periods. In Exp. 2, 32 weanling barrows (14.0 ± 1.1 kg) were placed in metabolism crates and allotted to a corn diet or diets containing corn and cheese co-product, fish meal, or ESBM. Data were analyzed using the MIXED procedure of SAS with diet as fixed effect and pig as random effect. Cheese co-product had greater (P < 0.05) SID of most AA and greater (P < 0.05) ME compared with fish meal and ESBM (Table 1). In Exp. 3, 128 weanling pigs (6.2 ± 0.6 kg) were allotted to 4 diets, eight pens per diet, and 4 pigs/pen. The 4 phase 1 diets were fed from d 1 to 14 post-weaning and included a control diet containing ESBM and SPD or diets in which 6, 7, or14 % cheese co-product replaced ESBM, SPD, or both ESBM and SPD. Orthogonal-polynomial contrasts were used to determine linear and quadratic effects of including cheese co-product in the diets. Results demonstrated that cheese co-product had no influence on growth performance. In conclusion, cheese co-product has greater SID of most AA and greater ME than fish meal and ESBM, and cheese co-product can replace ESBM and SDP in phase 1 diets without affecting growth performance of pigs.