Evaluation of standardized ileal digestible valine:lysine, total lysine:crude protein, and replacing fish meal, meat and bone meal, and poultry byproduct meal with crystalline amino acids on growth performance of nursery pigs from seven to twelve kilograms.

Five experiments were conducted to evaluate replacing fish meal, meat and bone meal, and poultry byproduct meal with crystalline AA for 7- to 12-kg pigs. In all experiments, pigs (PIC TR4 × 1050) were fed a common diet for 3 d postweaning, treatment diets for 14 d (d 0 to 14), and, again, a common diet for 14 d (d 14 to 28). Treatment diets were corn-soybean meal based and formulated to contain 1.30% standardized ileal digestible (SID) Lys. Experiment 1 evaluated replacing dietary fish meal with crystalline AA. For the 6 treatments, crystalline Lys, Met, Thr, Trp, Ile, Val, Gln, and Gly all increased to maintain minimum AA ratios as fish meal decreased (4.50, 3.60, 2.70, 1.80, and 0.90 to 0.00%). There was no difference in ADG, ADFI, or G:F among treatments, validating a low-CP, AA-fortified diet for subsequent experiments. Experiment 2 evaluated deleting crystalline AA from a low-CP, AA-fortified diet with 6 treatments: 1) a positive control similar to the diet validated in Exp. 1, 2) positive control with l-Ile deleted, 3) positive control with l-Trp deleted, 4) positive control with l-Val deleted, 5) positive control with l-Gln and l-Gly deleted, and 6) positive control with l-Ile, l-Trp, l-Val, l-Gln, and l-Gly deleted (NC). Pigs fed the positive control or Ile deleted diet had improved (P < 0.05) ADG and ADFI during d 0 to 14 compared with pigs fed diets with l-Trp or l-Val deleted or NC. Experiment 3 evaluated 6 treatments with total Lys:CP of 6.79, 6.92, 7.06, 7.20, 7.35, and 7.51%. Fish meal was adjusted as a source of dispensable N to achieve the target Lys:CP. There were no differences in growth performance among pigs fed different Lys:CP diets. Experiment 4 evaluated increasing SID Val:Lys with Val at 57.4, 59.9, 62.3, 64.7, 67.2, and 69.6% of Lys. Average daily gain and ADFI increased (quadratic, P < 0.01) and G:F improved (linear, P = 0.02) during d 0 to 14 as Val:Lys increased from 57.4 to 64.7%. Experiment 5 was a 2 × 3 factorial arrangement of treatments with main effects of low or high level of crystalline AA and 3 animal protein sources (fish meal, meat and bone meal, or poultry byproduct meal). Low- and high-crystalline AA diets contained 4.5 or 1% fish meal, 6 or 1.2% meat and bone meal, and 6 or 1% poultry byproduct meal, respectively. No AA × protein source interactions were observed. From d 0 to 14, no differences in growth performance among protein sources was found, whereas increasing crystalline AA improved (P = 0.04) ADG. In conclusion, crystalline AA can replace fish meal, meat and bone meal, and poultry byproduct meal when balanced for SID AA ratios of Met and Cys:Lys (58%), Thr:Lys (62%), Trp:Lys (16.5%), Val:Lys (65%), and Ile:Lys (52%).