ABSTRACT


Marco Antonio Esnaola L.1
 
Two feeding trials were conducted to evaluate6ats as replacement for barley in diets for growing-finishing pigs. In Experiment I and Experiment 2, forty five and fifty crossbred pigs, respectively, were used. Pigs were allocated at-randon to 5 treatments with an initial·liveweight of approximately, 25 Kg.Treatments were as follows:
I. Basal barley diet.
II. 25% of the barley in the basal diet replaced by oats.
III. 50% of the barley in the basal diet replaced oats.
IV. 75% of the barley in the basal diet replaced by oats.
V. 100% of the barley in the basal diet replaced by oats.
Pigs were fed ad-lib in automatic feeders. A grower diet, (15% crude protein) up to 50 Kg liveweight and a finisher diet (13% crude protein) from the later up to 100 Kg were used, The barley and oats were of Amrigschwander and Soleil II varieties, respectively. In both Experiments the addition of oats reduced daily gains and efficiency of food conversion, although this effect was non significant in Experiment 2 (P > 0.05). If the results of both experiments are pooled and statistically analised, it was shown that oats reduced significantly and linearly (P < 0.01) daily gains and efficiency of food conversion. No significant differences were detected between the barley basal diet and the diet containing 25% replacement (19% of oat in the diet).Considering the quality of the varieties oats is equivalent to 88% of the nutritive value of barley, when is used as a complete replacement. Oat levels reduced significantly (P < 0.05) the dressing percent of the carcass, but dit not affect back-fat, carcass length and loin area measuremen ts. The need to evalue other varieties of barley and oats is discussed.
Key words:
1Ing. Agr., Ph. D., Programa Producción Porcina, Estación Experimental Carillanca, Instituto de Investigaciones Agropecuarias (INIA), Casilla 58-D, Temuco, Chile