Corn Particle Size Affects Nutritional Value of Simple and Complex Diets for Nursery Pigs and Broiler Chicks

Two experiments were conducted to determine the effects of reducing particle size of corn from 1,000 to 500 ${\mu}m$ in simple and complex diets for nursery pigs and broiler chicks. In Exp 1., 192 nursery pigs were used in a 24 d growth assay. Treatments were: 1) 1,000 ${\mu}m$ corn in a simple diet; 2) 500 ${\mu}m$ corn in a simple diet; 3) 1,000 ${\mu}m$ corn in a complex diet; and 4) 500 ${\mu}m$ corn in a complex diet. Overall, pigs fed complex diets had 9% greater ADG (p<0.005) and 5% greater gain/feed (p<0.01) compared to pigs fed simple diets. Also, pigs fed the 500 ${\mu}m$ treatments had 3% better overall gain/feed than those fed the 1,000 ${\mu}m$ treatments (p<0.007). At d 9, apparent digestibilities of DM, N and GE were greater for complex diets and diets with smaller particle size (p<0.02). At d 23, there were no differences in nutrient digestibility resulting from diet complexity, but pigs fed diets with corn ground to 500 ${\mu}m$ had greater digestibility of DM (p<0.02) and GE (p<0.003) than pigs fed diets with corn ground to 1,000 ${\mu}m$. A second experiment was designed to determine if four days old broiler chicks were an acceptable model for predicting the effects of feed processing procedures on nursery pigs. Chicks fed complex diets had 3% greater gain/feed than chicks fed simple diets (p<0.001). Rate of gain and feed intake were improved by 3 and 2%, respectively, for chicks fed crumbled diets (p<0.03). However, there were several significant interactions among the main effects. For instance, crumbling did not affect gain/feed in chicks fed complex diets, but rate of gain and feed intake were increased by 7 and 6%, respectively, when simple diets were crumbled (diet complexity${\times}$diet form, p<0.001). Also, gain/feed of chicks was improved by 3% when particle size was reduced in meal diets, but not affected in chicks fed crumbles (diet form${\times}$particle size, p<0.005). Thus, our data suggested that reduction of particle size of corn was important for simple and complex diets and that a complex diet with 1,000 ${\mu}m$ corn gave no better performance than a simple diet with 500 ${\mu}m$ corn.