Breault, Madison T.Lerner, Anne B.Jones, Cassandra K.2019-07-312019-07-312019-05-09http://hdl.handle.net/2097/39907Increased pressure from pork consumers to reduce the use of antibiotics and ZnO in diets of nursery pigs creates a need for research regarding antibiotic alternatives. The objective of this study was to compare the effects of different diets on growth performance of pigs over a 35d period. A total of 360 pigs (200x400 5.4 ±0.06 kg BW) were assigned to 6 treatment diets in 2 phases, then a common diet for the third phase. The treatments included: 1) negative control; 2) ZnO (3,000ppm in phase 1 and 1,500ppm in phase 2); 3) 50g/ton carbadox; 4) 1%C6:C8:C10 MCFA; 5) 1%R2 (Feed Energy, Des Moines, Iowa); or 6) 1%FORMI GML (ADDCON; Bitterfield-Wolfen, Germany). The experiment used a randomized design with pen being the experimental unit consisting of 6 pigs/pen and 10 replicates. Pigs were weighed and feed intake was recorded weekly to calculate ADG, G:F, and ADFI. Data was analyzed using PROC GLIMMIX (SAS version 9.4; Cary, NC). Responses showed that from d0 to 19 pigs fed ZnO, carbadox, and 1%FORMI had increased ADG (P<0.05) while other treatments were intermediate. Pigs fed ZnO had improved ADFI (P=0.004) compared to those fed R2, negative control, and C6:C8:C10 diets with other diets being intermediate. Overall, G:F was not different among treatments (P=0.078). For the overall study (d0 to 35) ZnO and carbadox resulted in improved ADG(P=0.012) with the others being intermediate. The results of the study concluded that ZnO and carbadox are effective options for growth and that 1%FORMI MCFA can potentially be used as an alternative for carbadox or ZnO with minimal effects on growth. Additional research should be performed to further evaluate this topic.en-USThis Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).Spring 2019Text