Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
12
Estimating Real-time Individual Amino
Acid Requirements in Growing-finishing
Pigs: Towards a New Definition of Nutrient
Requirements in Growing-finishing Pigs?
C. Pomar,
1
* J. Pomar,
2
J. Rivest,
1,3
L. Cloutier,
4
M.-P. Letourneau-Montminy,
1
I. Andretta
1
and L. Hauschild
5
1
Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, East Lennoxville, Quebec,
Canada;
2
Universitat de Lleida, Lleida, Espagne;
3
Centre de Développement
du Porc du Quebec inc., Sainte-Foy, Quebec, Canada;
4
Université Laval,
Quebec, Canada;
5
Universidade Estadual Paulista, Jaboticabal,
São Paulo, Brazil
Abstract
Energy, amino acids, minerals, vitamins and water are essential nutrients that must be provided to
animals in adequate amounts to live (maintenance), grow and produce (reproduction, lactation, etc.).
For a given growing animal and at a given time during its development, the daily nutrient require-
ments can be estimated as the sum of the requirements for maintenance and growth. These require-
ments are estimated for each nutrient or its precursor taking into account the efficiency with which
each nutrient is used for each metabolic function. However, pigs are raised in groups and, within
each group, animals significantly differ in body weight and growth potential and consequently nutri-
ent requirements vary greatly among them. Phase-feeding is widely used in growing-finishing pig
operations and, in this context of feeding populations, nutrition requirements are rather defined as
the amount of nutrients needed for specified production purposes, which in farm animals consist of
optimal production outputs (e.g. maximal growth rate, optimal feed conversion, etc.). Unfortunately,
the optimal population responses are obtained with levels of nutrients that satisfy the requirements
of the most demanding pigs, with the result that most of the pigs in the population receive more
nutrients than they need to express their growth potential. Precision farming or precision agriculture
is an agricultural management concept that relies on the existence of in-field variability. Precision
feeding allows the feeding of individual pigs with daily tailored diets, the composition of which is
determined in real time using the available information from the farm, which in the context of preci-
sion feeding is daily feed intake and body weight measurements. The real-time individual pig nutri-
ent requirement estimated using each pig pattern of feed intake and growth represents a fundamental
paradigm shift in pig nutrition because pig nutrient requirements are no longer a population attribute
estimated from data collected in previous trials, but a dynamic process that evolves independently
for each animal and is regulated by its own intrinsic (e.g. genetics, health, nutritional status, etc.) and
extrinsic (e.g. environmental and social stressors, management, etc.) modulating factors. Precision feed-
ing is being proposed to alleviate the limitations of group-feeding systems in which optimal dietary
