GROWTH PERFORMANCE OF PIGS AS INFLUENCED BY DIFFERENT HOUSING SYSTEMS

Résumé

Housing management of animals in the form of bedding is very necessary for good health and better growth. Thus, an experiment was conducted to evaluate the growth performance of crossbred weaner pigs reared on concrete, wood shaving and clay floors. Twenty-seven (27) weaned pigs obtained from piggery unit of the Teaching and Research Farm, Oyo State College of Agriculture and Technology, Igboora were used for the study. The pigs were assigned into three treatments of nine animals per treatment and three animals per replicate. The treatments were T1 (Concrete floor), T2 (Woodshaving floor) and T3 (Clay floor). The concrete floor was constructed using cement, gravel, sand and water. Wood shavings were collected from sawmills within Ibadan metropolis and dirt, pebbles, iron metals, broken bottles were removed and later spread on the cemented floor to make wood shaving floor and replaced when the wood shavings had been wet. For clay floor,termite hills were collected, ground into powdery form, spread on the cemented floor and water was added then rubbed on the cemented floor to have clay floor. The pigs were acclimatized for a week before the commencement of the study. Performance characteristics measured were initial weight, final weight, average weight gain, Average feed intake and feed conversion ratio. The experiment was a completely randomized design. Results showed that pigs reared on concrete floor had the highest final weight (13.47kg and average weight gain (8.48kg). The average feed intake was not differed across the treatments. Feed conversion ratio (2.95) was better in pigs reared on concrete floor. It can be concluded that rearing of pigs on concrete floor improved pig performance