Incidence of feed steam-heating process on performance level of piglets after weaning

Heating process applied to piglet feeds is assessed to prevent or limit chronic diarrhoea of piglets after weaning, but its incidence on performance level remains unknown.A trial involving 725 piglets shared into 3 batches compares pellets (4 mm in diameter aggregates) and heated flour, with respect to performance level, i.e. feed intake, growth and feed consumption efficiency. Heating process here consists in steaming the flour at a 90°C temperature level during 3 minutes.Both treatments receive same-composed feeds, based on ideal protein contents regarding essential amino acids.Digestible lysine is 1.2 g per MJ , referring to net energy.Heated flour leads in any case to increase feed conversion ratio, of 6.1% on average. Daily growth is also reduced with heated flour (2.8 % on average), but the incidence strongly depends on the sex and batch: whereas no difference appears with females in batches 1 and 2 nor with males in batch 1, the gap rises up to 9.7 % with males in batch 2.Then, these results suggest that feed nutritional characteristics should have to be adjusted when using heated flour to preserve performance level.