Growth Performance of Butcher’s Pigs Fed on Diets Made from the Ruminal Contents of Bovine Animals

Both quantitatively and qualitatively, underfeeding materialized by underconsumption of meat remains one of the things most felt in Africa. To make up for this deficit, emphasis is placed on the production of short-cycle animals such as poultry, rabbits and pork. Among these animals, pig plays a very important socio-economic role in the life of local populations. Its meat is required in various ceremonies such as the dowry and funerals. For this purpose, twenty four males cross piglets with Large White × Landrace × Duroc × Pietrain phenotypic traits, aged between 58 and 62 days and having an average weight of 9.978 ± 1.11 kg were used to evaluate the influence of graded levels of bovine rumen content on the growth performances of grower finisher pigs. The piglets were submitted to 4 treatments, housed in pairs and fed ad libitum with a diet containing 0, 5%, 10% and 20% bovine rumen content. The trial which lasted for 18 weeks was carried out at the Teaching and Research Farm of the University of Dschang. The results showed that drying process destroyed most microbes found in the rumen content. These results also showed that the incorporation of bovine rumen content in diets had no significant (p > 0.05) effect on feed conversion ratio efficiency. However, feed intake, body weight and body weight gain were significantly higher in pigs fed with a diet (R5) containing 5% of bovine rumen content. Feed cost per kg of live body weight was significantly (p 20 diet compared to the animals receiving the control diet which was lower than that of the other two diets (R0) and (R5) but comparable with animals fed diet R10. The analysis of the carcass showed that increasing incorporation level of bovine rumen content in the diet reduces abdominal fat and back fat thickness. For offal, the lowest weight was recorded in animals fed the control diet (R0) and the highest weight with animals fed a diet containing 5% bovine rumen content. Carcass length of animals fed the control diet (R0) was significantly greater compared with the carcass of animals fed diet R10 and comparable to that of the other two treatments. The pH of the pork was comparable (p > 0.05) in all the treatments. In conclusion, a diet containing 5% bovine rumen content induced the best growth performances compared to all the other groups, while diet R20 produced lean pork with the higher production cost.

Comparison of rumen bacteria distribution in original rumen digesta, rumen liquid and solid fractions in lactating Holstein cows

Background： Original rumen digesta, rumen liquid and solid fractions have been frequently used to assess the rumen bacterial community. However, bacterial profiles in rumen original digesta, liquid and solid fractions vary from each other and need to be better established.Methods： To compare bacterial profiles in each fraction, samples of rumen digesta from six cows fed either a high fiber diet（HFD） or a high energy diet（HED） were collected via rumen fistulas. Rumen digesta was then squeezed through four layers of cheesecloth to separate liquid and solid fractions. The bacterial profiles of rumen original digesta, liquid and solid fractions were analyzed with High-throughput sequencing technique.Results： Rumen bacterial diversity was mainly affected by diet and individual cow（P 〉 0.05） rather than rumen fraction. Bias distributed bacteria were observed in solid and liquid fractions of rumen content using Venn diagram and LEf Se analysis. Fifteen out of 16 detected biomarkers（using LEf Se analysis） were found in liquid fraction, and these 15 biomarkers contributed the most to the bacterial differences among rumen content fractions.Conclusions： Similar results were found when using samples of original rumen digesta, rumen liquid or solid fractions to assess diversity of rumen bacteria; however, more attention should be draw onto bias distributed bacteria in different ruminal fractions, especially when liquid fraction has been used as a representative sample for rumen bacterial study.