CreAMINO® improves growth performance and carcass quality of finisher pigs

CreAMINO^® is a supplemental source of guanidinoacetic acid (GAA), an amino acid derivative and natural precursor of creatine. Creatine is a constituent of animal tissue and it is normally produced by liver, kidneys and pancreas mainly from arginine and glycine. Creatine plays an important role in energy metabolism, particularly in skeletal muscle cells (Brosnan and Brosnan, 2007). About 67 % of daily creatine need can be met by de-novo synthesis (Brosnan et al., 2009), yet, the rest 33 % of creatine must be supplied through feed only. In modern fast-growing pigs, the demand for creatine can be achieved partly from animal byproducts, however, a creatine deficiency can be compensated only by supplementing CreAMINO® to the feed.

This study was done in collaboration with Institute of Southern Vietnam at Thong Nhat Farm, Cu Chi District, Ho Chi Minh city, Vietnam.

One thousand and four hundred and forty finisher pigs, with an average body weight of 56.15 ± 0.10 kg were randomly allocated to four treatments with 18 replicates (20 pigs per replicate). Corn-soybean meal-based basal (control) diets (Table 1) were formulated for the finisher phase and fed through the 60 day experimental period. Dietary treatments included were control diet (T 1), control diet + 0.12 % CreAMINO®/MT fed 60 days before slaughter (T 2), control diet + 0.12 % CreAMINO®/MT fed 40 days before slaughter (T 3) and control diet + 0.12 % CreAMINO®/MT fed 25 days before slaughter (T 4). Experimental diets did not contain antimicrobial growth promoter. Body weight was measured at the start (120 d of age) and the end (180 d of age) of the experiment. Average daily weight gain (ADG), average daily feed intake (ADFI) and feed conversion ratio (FCR) were calculated. At the end of the study, 144 pigs (72 barrows and 72 gilts) from 4 dietary treatments (36 pigs per treatment) were slaughtered for the determination of carcass and meat quality. For statistical analysis (SAS 9.4), data were subjected to analysis of variance and period effect was considered as a co-variance. The treatments were compared using Tukey’s test. Statistical significance were reported for P<0.05.

The analyzed GAA content in the experimental diets are shown in Table 2. Results on growth performance of pigs (120–180 d of age) are presented in Table 3. The final BW of the pigs fed 0.12% CreAMINO® 60 d before slaughter (T 2) was higher (P<0.05) than control pigs (T 1) and those fed CreAMINO® 25 d before slaughter (T 4). Similarly, the average daily gain for T 2 was significantly higher (P<0.05) than T 1 and T 4. The average daily feed intake was similar (P>0.05) among the treatments. FCR of T 2 was better (P<0.05) than T 1 and T 4.