Published in Scientific Papers. Series D. Animal Science, Vol. LX
Written by Arabela Elena UNTEA, Tatiana Dumitra PANAITE, Mihaela SARACILA, Cristina SOICA
An experiment was conducted to evaluate the effects of symbiotics and organic zinc on pork quality (five anatomical parts and three types of organs) of growing pigs. The 28 days study was conducted on 8 castrated Topigs growing pigs, males, with an initial bodyweight of 18.25 ± 0.43 kg. The pigs were assigned to 2 groups (C, E), housed in individual metabolic cages and fed on conventional diets with 18.54% CP and 3129.6 kcal/kg ME. The diets of E group contained organic Zn (E.C.O. Trace® Trace minerals, Biochem Zusatzstoffe Handels- und ProduktionsgesellschaftmbH Küstermeyerstr, Germany) and it was supplemented with 10 g/kg symbiotics (BiominR IMBO Pro/prebiotic, BIOMIN, GmbH Austria). At the end of experiment, all pigs were slaughtered and meat (tenderloin; loin; ham; shoulder; belly) and organ (liver, kidney and spleen) samples were collected. The mineral quality of the collected samples was evaluated. For the samples of loin, tenderloin and belly, the iron concentrations were significantly (P≤0.5) increased for E group, compared to C group (loin: 7.3 ± 0.4 ppm for C; 10.05 ± 0.8 ppm for E; tenderloin: 14.51 ± 2.3 ppm for C; 18.82 ± 0.9 ppm for E and belly: 14.31 ± 1.14 ppm for C; 19.89 ± 1.5 ppm for E). Similar results were obtained for iron concentrations in organs, but, the differences recorded were only numeric. No significant differences were noticed between groups for Zn, Cu and Mn concentrations in the collected samples. The conclusion of the study was that symbiotics and organic zinc had positive effects on mineral metabolism and these results confirm the synergistic interrelation of Zn and Fe.
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