Use of Chinese Sunflower Meal as a Nonconventional Protein Feedstuff for Growing-Finishing Pigs

Two experiments were conducted to determine the ileal digestibility of the amino acids contained in sunflower meal using the regression technique and then applying the values obtained, in a growth trial, using growing-finishing pigs. For the digestibility trial, four 20 kg crossbred ($Yorkshire{\times}Landrace{\times}Beijing$ Black) barrows were fitted with simple Tcannula in the terminal ileum. After recovery, the barrows were fed one of four experimental diets according to a $4{\times}4$ Latin Square design. The pigs were fed corn-soybean meal based diets supplemented with 0, 25, 50 or 75% sunflower meal. For the growth trial, 80 crossbred ($Yorkshire{\times}Landrace{\times}Beijing$ Black) growing pigs (21.5 kg) were fed corn-soybean meal diets supplemented with 0, 5, 10 or 15% sunflower meal. Five pens (2 gilts and 2 castrates) were assigned to each treatment. With the exception of arginine and valine, the digestibility coefficients for the indispensible amino acids declined as the level of sunflower meal in the diet increased. During both the growing (21.5-49.1 kg) and finishing (49.1-90.3 kg) periods and over the entire experiment (21.5-90.3 kg), average daily gain declined in a linear manner (p<0.05) with increasing amounts of sunflower meal. Feed intake was not significantly altered while feed conversion declined in a linear manner (p<0.05) during the grower period only. When the entire experimental period was taken into account, there would appear to be little penalty in either growth or feed conversion for including sunflower meal at levels up to 10% of the diet. Therefore, the price relationship between sunflower meal and other high-protein feedstuffs may provide an excellant opportunity for pork producers to use sunflower meal in order to reduce feed costs.