Conventional breeding of corn has generated a new variety (i.e., high-oil corn) which is believed to contain greater concentrations of oil and crude protein than conventional corn. Indeed, results from digestibility experiments indicated that high-oil corn contained more standardized ileal digestible amino acids, digestible P, and metabolizable energy compared with conventional corn. It is, therefore, possible that the newly developed high-oil corn may improve pig growth performance, but data to demonstrate this are limited. Therefore, an experiment was conducted to test the hypothesis that high-oil corn improves growth performance of weanling pigs.

Experimental design

A 2-phase feeding program was used with d 1 to 14 as phase 1 and d 15 to 28 as phase 2. A total of 80 newly weaned pigs (initial body weight: 6.18 ± 0.54 kg) were allotted to 1 of 2 diets during phases 1 and 2. In both phases, pigs were fed a conventional corn-based diet or a high-oil corn-based diet. Therefore, 4 diets were formulated. Diets were formulated using data for metabolizable energy and digestibility of amino acids and P in high-oil corn and conventional corn from previous experiments, whereas data for all other ingredients and current nutrient requirements for weanling pigs were based from NRC. Due to increased concentrations of digestible amino acids and energy in high-oil corn, inclusion of soybean meal and soybean oil was reduced by 3 to 4% and 2.5%, respectively, in the high-oil corn diet compared with the conventional corn diet. There were 5 pigs per pen with 8 replicate pens per treatment. Individual pig weights and feed left in the feeders were weighed and recorded at the beginning of the experiment, on day 14, and at the conclusion of the experiment (day 28).

Results

Inclusion of high-oil corn to diets did not affect average daily gain (ADG), average daily feed intake (ADFI), and gain to feed ratio (G:F) of pigs during phase 1, phase 2, and overall experimental period (Table 1).

Key points

• Replacing conventional corn with high-oil corn did not affect growth performance of young pigs.
• When including high-oil corn in weanling pig diets, soybean meal and soybean oil can be reduced by up to 4% and 2.5%, respectively.
• Packing more amino acids, energy, and phosphorus, high-oil corn could save producers money by reducing the need to supplement these dietary components from soybean meal, oil, and feed phosphates.

Table 1. Growth performance for pigs fed the experimental diets¹

¹Data are least squares means of 8 observations for all treatments.

²ADG = average daily gain; ADFI= average daily feed intake; G:F = gain:feed.