Growth response of native pigs from Leucaena leaf supplementation of basal diets of rice bran and maize

Phonepaseuth Phengsavanh, Soukanh Keonouchanh and Keo Xayphengphanh

Livestock Research Center
National Agriculture and Forestry Research Institutek MAF
Lao PDR
s.phengsavanh@gmail.com

Abstract

The effect of different levels of leucaena leaf meal in a diet based on rice bran and maize grass was studied in an experiment with 30 pigs of local breed with different sex, weighed 25.3±3.1 kg). The pigs were blocked according to sex into two groups and allocated to five treatments, consisting of 5 levels 0, 10, 20, 30% of leucaena leaf meal and 10% of fresh leucaena leaves in the diet based on expected dry matter (DM) intake. Leucaena leaf meal is proved to be a high quality feed for pigs, because of high crude protein (CP) content and digestibility. However, the only problem in utilization of leucaena leaves is mimosine content, which causes health problem and growth of pigs. The suggestion from the result of this experiment is that the level of leucaena leaf meal inclusion should be at around 10%. Pigs in this group had better growth rate and also less effect from mimosine. Therefore, in practice there will be a need to mix with other legume leaf meal to minimize the effect of mimosine, better balance of nutrients in the diets and higher growth rate of pigs.

Keywords: Leucaena leaf meal, Native pigs, Live weight gain, Mimosine