Evaluation of fermented whole crop wheat and barley feeding on growth performance, nutrient digestibility, faecal volatile fatty acid emission, blood constituents, and faecal microbiota in growing pigs

This study was conducted to determine the effects of feeding diets with fermented whole crop wheat (FWW) and fermented whole crop barley (FWB) on growth performance, nutrient digestibility, blood constituents, faecal volatile fatty acid (VFA) emission and faecal microbiota in growing pigs. A total of 200 growing pigs were randomly allotted to five treatments with eight replicates per treatment and five pigs per replicate. Dietary treatments consisted of i) CON (basal diet), ii) 0.5% FWW (CON + 0.5% fermented whole crop wheat), iii) 1.0% FWW (CON + 1.0% fermented whole crop wheat), iv) 0.5% FWB (CON + 0.5% fermented whole crop barley), and v) 1.0% FWB (CON + 1.0% fermented whole crop barley). The digestibility of total dietary fibre was significantly higher in pigs fed FWW diets. The faecal emissions of VFA of pigs fed the fermented treatments was increased significantly compared with CON. Concentrations of cortisol and triglyceride in blood of pigs fed 1.0% FWW were significantly lower than pigs fed CON diets. The pigs fed 1.0% FWB diets had a significantly decreased level of total cholesterol in blood compared with CON. In conclusion, the current results indicated that diets supplemented with FWW and FWB could increase faecal VFA emission and reduce concentration of triglyceride and cortisol, while 0.5% and 1.0% FWW had no negative effects on growth performance, and could increase digestibility of dietary fibre in growing pigs.