Effects Of Dietary Probiotic On Growth Performance, Gastrointestinal PH And Meat Quality Of Suhuai Pigs

Probiotic can be used as feed additive to improve the growth performance of livestock. It would reduce the bacterial resistance, the drug residues in the livestock and poultry; and the threat to human health and survival environment compared with antibiotic. In order to promote healthy breeding of the local varieties "Suhuai pigs", we carried out this experiment. This trial used basal diet supplemented with and without antibiotic as control, investigated the effects of diet supplemented with probiotic on growth performance and meat quality of the growing-finishing Suhuai pigs.In our study,210 Suhuai pigs were collected by similar parity and similar body weight (30.29 ± 3.00 kg), then randomly divided into 3 groups (5 replications per group and 14 pigs in each replication) according to three different kinds of diets processing:blank control group (basal diet), probiotic group (basal diet with 640 mg · kg-1 probiotic), antibiotic group (basal diet with 100 mg · kg-1 antibiotic). The period of this experiment was 98 days. This study was conducted to investigate the effects of diet supplemented with probiotic on growth performance, gastrointestinal pH, and meat quality of growing-finishing Suhuai pigs. Meanwhile, to explore whether probiotic can be used to replace antibiotic in promoting the growth performance and improving the meat quality of Suhuai pigs by comparing the probiotic group and antibiotic group.The results showed that, (1) Suhuai pigs in probiotic group had 9.31% higher final weight (P< 0.05),13.30% higher ADG (P< 0.01),9.04% higher ADFI (P< 0.05) and 70.29% lower diarrhea rate (P< 0.01) than which in blank control group; compared with antibiotic group, probiotic group had 7.48% lower ADG (P< 0.01) and 10.55% higher average daily feed intake/average daily gain (F/G) (P< 0.05); no significant differences between ADFI and diarrhea rate (P> 0.05). Antibiotic group had 14.49% higher final weight (P< 0.01),22.46% higher ADG (P< 0.01),13.04% lower F/G (P< 0.01) and 67.36% lower diarrhea rate (P< 0.01) than blank control group. (2) Compared with blank control group, in some degree, probiotic group had lower pH of cecum, jejunum and ileum of Suhuai pigs and antibiotic group had lower pH of stomach; there were no significant differences among the three groups (P> 0.05). (3) Probiotic group had higher spleen weight (P< 0.05) than blank control group. Probiotic group and antibiotic group had 47.71% and 40.00% higher spleen index (P< 0.05) than blank control group. There were no significant differences on liver or liver index (P> 0.05). (4) Probiotic group and blank control group had 1.72% and 1.96% higher dressing rate,40.42% (P< 0.05) and 36.17% lower drp loss (P< 0.05),7.28%(P< 0.05) and 2.60% lower muscle moisture content than antibiotic group. (5) Compared with blank control group, probiotic group had 43.15% higher IMF and 9.64-fold H-FABP gene expression (P< 0.05); antibiotic group had 10.14%higher IMF and 6.36-fold H-FABP gene expression. Probiotic group had 29.81% higher IMF and 1.52-fold H-FABP gene expression than antibiotic group.This study indicated that diet supplemented with probiotic could improve the growth performance and spleen index; improve the H-FABP gene expression and IMF content, decrease the drip loss, which was contributed to improve the meat quality of growing-finishing Suhuai pigs. What’s more, probiotic group behaved better in decreasing muscle drip loss than antibiotic group. Therefore, probiotic can be used as feed additive to improve the growth performance and meat quality of Suhuai pigs.