distiller’s grains

fermented distiller’s grains

nutritional value

pigs

Digestion and performance experiments were conducted to investigate the nutritional value of microbially fermented distiller’s grains for growing pigs. Yorkshire x Landrace x Chinese Black pigs, with an average initial body weight (BW) of approximately 30 kg were used for both studies. The performance study was finished at a BW of approximately 60 kg. The distiller’s grains used in this study were the by-products of the Hunan Spirit Factory, in which sorghum and rice were the grains used for alcohol production. The material used for fermentation was a live bacteria (Hunan Wangshi Biotechnology Inc.) that can produce cellulase. Chemical analyses showed that the distiller’s grain used in this study contained 170.8 g/kg (in dry matter) of crude fibre, while the microbially fermented distiller’s grains contained only 96.7 g/kg of crude fibre. Meanwhile, crude protein was increased from 152.7 to 325.8 g/kg by microbial fermentation. The microbially fermented distiller’s grains also had higher (P<0.05) ileal apparent digestibility of crude fibre (24.9 vs 18.0%), crude protein (74.5 vs 41.9%), amino acids, and faecal digestibility of energy (70.3 vs 61.3%) than those of the distiller’s grains. The performance results show that 10% of a maize-soyabean meal based diet can be replaced by microbially fermented distiller’s grains, with no difference (P>0.05) in daily gain (795 vs 785 g) or feed efficiency (2.16 vs 2.20). However, the performance traits were affected (P<0.05) when the proportion of microbially fermented distiller’s grains in the diet was over 10%.