An Integrated Evaluation of the Nutrient Uplift Provided by Xylanase in Finishing Diets

This research has aspects that will evaluate methodology related to enzyme research (to help guide future research methods) as well as provide quantifiable nutrient release values (i.e., nutrient uplift) associated with combinations of enzymes. Specifically, the vast majority of digestibility studies use pigs fed new diets for short periods of time and the pigs are limit-fed the diets in metabolism crates. This does not mimic industry where diets are fed ad libitum for longer periods of time. This project has a small component that evaluates that question. Secondly, because of the limitation of the number of metabolism crates available to most investigators (or the labor to handle/process samples from those crates), experimental treatment number is minimized in order to increase the needed replication required for proper statistical evaluations. This means that evaluations of enzymes occurs as a single enzyme or, if more than one enzyme is evaluated, as some type of incomplete factorial design that omits certain combinations of treatments and thereby reduces the conclusions that can be drawn from the research. This project will use individually housed, ad libitum fed pigs to evaluate combinations of enzymes in complete factorial design. This will allow accurate estimations of the nutrient uplift associated with the enzymes evaluated. Finally, an evaluation of the most promising results from initial studies will be conducted in a commercial setting with pigs housed under the normal stressors of that environment to evaluate the differences between the moderately less stressful university environment and the normal production setting.