Energy and protein nutrition of early-weaned pigs. 1. effect of energy intake and energy: protein on growth, efficiency and nitrogen utilization of pigs between 8–32 d

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Abstract
1. The effect of energy and protein intake on the growth, food efficiency and nitrogen retention of artificially-reared pigs was studied over three 8 d periods between 8–32 d of age in an experiment employing a 5×3×2 factorial design. The factors were initial energy: N value (I; 250, 355, 460, 565 or 670 kJ/g N), rate of increase of 1 at 8 d intervals (0, 12.5 or 25%) and plane of nutrition (three times daily to appetite or 75% of this intake).2. The range of energy: N values was obtained by formulating five diets based on dried skim milk, lactose and casein and feeding appropriate combinations of two diets. The diets, which were pelleted, contained 100 g maize oil/kg and the gross energy content was approximately 20 MJ/kg.3. N digestibility was high at all three age intervals, reaching 0.99 on the diet containing the highest dietary crude protein (N × 6.25) level. Metabolic faecal N excretion was found to be 1.1 g/kg dry matter (DM) intake.4. Growth rate, feed conversion ratio (kg food intake/kg wt gain; FCR), N retention (NR) and the proportion of digested N retained (NR:apparent digested N (ADN)) were significantly (P< 0.001) affected by I values at all age intervals and the responses were quadratic. Response curves were calculated by the least squares method and optimum values of I determined for each of the criteria.A constant energy:N value of approximately 400 kJ/g N was indicated by growth, FCR and NR optima but the NR:ADN value fell from 0.77 for the 8–16 d period to 0.60 for the 24–32 d period at this I value. It is concluded that a suitable compromise would be an I value of 470 kJ/g N increasing by 10%/week.5. There was a significant interaction between plane of nutrition and I values on FCR between 16–24 d (P< 0.001) and 8–32 d (P< 0.01) indicating that FCR was better at high protein levels and worse at low protein levels when the diets were fed on the lower plane of nutrition.