Amino‐acid supplementation of a barley ration for the pig

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Abstract
A group of pigs were fed a series of diets based on high‐nitrogen barley, supplemented with pure amino‐acids. They were compared with a control group fed a conventional ration of cereals supplemented with fishmeal and soya‐bean meal. Although the grower rations all contained 16.4% of crude protein, the rate of growth and efficiency of food utilisation of pigs fed only barley and a supplement of vitamins and minerals was poor. Addition of L‐lysine and DL‐methionine improved the performance and a further supplementation with DL‐tryptophan, DL‐isoleucine and DL‐threonine resulted in an improvement in performance to equal that of control pigs. The advantages in terms of carcass quality due to the supplementation of amino‐acids was even more pronounced than the growth response.