Effect of dietary calcium and lecithin on growth performance and small intestinal morphology of young wild pigs

Abstract

The present study was conducted to test whether dietary supplementation of calcium and lecithin affects growth performance and small intestinal morphology of young wild pigs. Twenty-four growing wild pigs (average body weight 7.33. kg), were allotted into 3 groups and were fed ad libitum with 3 experimental diets: a control diet (Cont), a high calcium diet (HCa; 2.46% Ca) or a high calcium diet with lecithin (HCaL; 2.42% Ca and 1.93% lecithin) throughout the study. Five pigs from each treatment were killed to determine morphology of small intestine, villous height (VH), villous width (VW), crypt depth (CD), ratio of VH to CD and villous surface area (VA). The results showed that dietary supplementation of calcium and lecithin had no effect on average daily feed intake (ADFI), average daily gain (ADG) and feed to gain ratio. The pigs fed the HCaL diet showed a trend (P=0.082) towards smaller CD when compared with pigs fed the Cont diet. The ratio of VH:CD was highest for the pigs fed the HCaL diet. There were no differences for VH, VW and VA between the three treatment diets. Thus, in the current study, supplementation with high calcium and lecithin had no effect on pig performance, but tended to influence the morphology of the small intestine by increasing the VH:CD ratio of wild pigs. © 2010 Elsevier B.V.