Dietary treatments and composition were demonstrated
in the Table 1. Effects of the experimental diets on pig
performance are shown in Table 2. There were no significant
differences in average daily feed intake (ADFI) between the
three experimental diets. Feed:gain tended to decrease with the HCa diet (P=0.088) and HCaL diet (P=0.097) when
compared with the control diet. Average daily gain (ADG)
tended to increase with high dietary calcium levels both with
(P=0.098) and without lecithin (P=0.096). There also were
no differences in fat, calcium and phosphorus utilization
between three studied diets.
Gut morphology characteristics of pigs fed the experimental
diets are shown in Table 3. There were no diet effects
on VH, VW, CD, VH:CD and VA at the three different sites of
small intestine. However, when overall morphological characteristics
from three different sites were determined, the
ratio of VH:CD was higher in pigs fed the HCaL diet (Pb0.05)
than in pigs fed either the control or the HCa diet (Table 3).
Additionally, the CD of pigs fed the HCaL diet tended to be
shorter (P=0.082) than that of the pigs fed the control diet,
while there were no differences between the control diet and
the HCa diet.