Fatufe et al., 2007. Livest. Res. Rural Dev., 19 (12): 180

In  a 42 days feeding trials, twenty growing crossbred pigs with mean initial body weights of 16 ± 0.8kg were assigned randomly to 5 dietary treatment groups of four pigs each.  A basal diet was formulated. The basal diet was based on cassava flour, maize offals, soyabean meal and brewer’s dried grain (BDG). A mixture of cassava peel meal and (CPM) and palm kernel meal (PKM) replaced the BDG fraction in the basal diet in the ratio 2:0, 0:2, 1:1 and 1.75:1.75 in diets II, III, IV and V respectively. Each diet was offered on ad libitum basis. Pigs were individually weighed on weekly basis until the end of the experiment. Daily voluntary feed intake was monitored.

Growing pigs responded non-significantly (p> 0.05) to the mixture of different fibre sources in body weight gain, feed conversion ratio and protein efficiency ratio except for feed intake, which varied significantly (p< 0.05). Data on final body weight was described using the linear regression method. The slope of regression of final body weight (y) (kg/pig/week) depending on weeks (kg/week) was highest on diet V (3.525 ± 0.1842) and lowest on diet II (2.074 ± 0.1742). Digestibility values also varied significantly (p< 0.05) with ether extract having the average digestibility value (%) of 90.32 and ash the lowest value of 53.60.