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A Chemically Defined Diet for Maximal Growth of Pigs¹

Department of Animal Sciences and Division of Nutritional Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801

Three growth assays and one balance experiment were conducted to determine the optimal mixture of dietary amino acids for 10-kg pigs fed a chemically defined diet. Pigs were meal fed at 0700 and 1700 h in all experiments. Increasing all indispensable amino acids by 20% from their original levels improved weight gain and gain:feed ratio to levels equivalent to those of pigs fed a 20% protein corn-soybean meal-dried whey positive control diet. Replacing the glutamateglycine-proline dispensable amino acid mixture with a complete mixture of dispensable amino acids (i.e., glutamate, glycine, proline, glutamine, serine, alanine, aspartate and asparagine) did not improve growth rate. A balance study showed that retention of nitrogen and energy (percentage of intake) from the final purified diet was superior to that of pigs fed the corn-soybean meal-dried whey diet. Metabolizable energy and metabolizable energy corrected for nitrogen retention of the final purified amino acid diet were determined to be 14.43 and 13.96 MJ/kg diet, respectively. The chemically defined diet developed here for young pigs provides a means of studying nutrient utilization in the pig under conditions in which all nutrients are essentially 100% bioavailable.

KEY WORDS: • pigs • amino acids • purified amino acid diet

¹ Supported in part by funds provided by the Illinois Agriculture Experiment Station and by Degussa Corporation-USA, Allendale, NJ 07401.

² To whom reprint requests should be addressed.

Manuscript received 24 September 1990. Revision accepted 11 December 1990.

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