ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 global pandemic greatly affected pork processing plants in the United States. These pork processing plants were forced to either temporarily close or operate at reduced capacity due to the increased number of health-related employee absences. Because finishing pigs could not be timely marketed, methods to reduce growth performance were required to keep pigs from becoming too heavy at slaughter weight. Therefore, our objective was to determine the extent that reducing dietary standardized ileal digestible (SID) Lys and tryptophan-to-lysine ratio (Trp:Lys) ratio would slow finishing pig average daily gain (ADG) in a commercial setting. A total of 1,080 finishing pigs (327 × 1050, PIC; initially 32.3 kg) were used in a 119-d growth trial. Pigs were allotted by initial body weight (BW) and randomly assigned to 1 of 4 dietary treatments in a completely randomized block design with 27 pigs per pen and 10 pens per treatment. Three dietary regimes were formulated to contain either 100%, 90%, or 80% of the estimated SID Lys requirement for pigs in this facility, with a SID Trp:Lys ratio of 19%, with the exception of the last dietary phase formulated to 17% SID Trp:Lys. Seven different dietary phases were fed. The SID Lys concentrations in the 100% diets were: 1.10%, 1.01%, 0.91%, 0.83%, 0.79%, 0.71%, or 0.67% SID Lys from 32 to 40, 40 to 51, 51 to 72, 72 to 85, 85 to 98, 98 to 112, and 112 to 130 kg, respectively. A fourth regime was formulated to 80% SID Lys with a SID Trp:Lys ratio of 16% (80-16% SID Trp:Lys) throughout all phases. Overall from d 0 to 119, ADG (linear, P < 0.001), final BW (linear, P < 0.001), and gain-to-feed (G:F) decreased (linear, P = 0.087) as SID Lys decreased from 100% to 80% of the estimated requirement. Pigs fed the 80-16% SID Trp:Lys diets had an additional decrease in ADG (P < 0.05) and G:F (P < 0.10) compared with pigs fed 80% of the SID Lys requirement with the normal Trp:Lys ratio. The reduction in SID Lys (from 100% to 80%) and reduction in SID Lys and Trp:Lys ratio resulted in an 8.6 and 11.7 kg, respectively, decrease in final BW compared with pigs fed Lys and Trp at the requirement (100%). This study provides alternatives for pork producers to reduce growth rate of finishing pigs.