Abstract
An experiment was conducted to investigate the effect of dietary crude protein level and physical form of diet on performance of newly weaned pigs. A total of 24, 45 days old pigs (DYL) were randomly allotted into 6 treatments with 4 replicates in a randomized complete block design with 3 x 2 factorial arrangements. The six treatments provided were 1) diet con-taining crude protein 20%, fed in dry form, 2) diet containing crude pro-tein 20% fed in wet form, 3) diet containing crude protein 18% fed in dry form, 4) diet containing crude protein 18% fed in wet form, 5) diet con-taining crude protein 16% fed in dry form, and 6) diet containing crude protein 16% fed in wet form. Wet forms of diet were prepared by steam-ing the complete diet at 140˚F for 15 minutes. Experimental period was 12 weeks. Results from experiment showed that pigs fed wet form of diet had significantly (P < 0.001) increase average daily feed intake (ADFI), av-erage daily gain (ADG) and gain: feed ratio (G/F ratio) during the first two weeks and this improved performance with wet feed maintained through-out experiment. The dietary protein level had no significant (P > 0.05) effect on performance during the first two weeks but as the animal aged significant difference was found (P < 0.05) among treatments. Treatment 4 had the highest ADFI and ADG compared to others and treatment 2 had the highest ratio (G/F). Therefore, these results suggested that feeding wet feed to newly weaned pigs is better than dry counterpart and a slight reduction in dietary crude protein level (3-4 units below NRC recommen-dation) had no detrimental effect on performance of newly weaned pigs. Either dietary crude protein level or physical form of diet had no signifi-cant effect on digestibility of DM, CP and CF.