Effects of glucose oxidase on the growth performance, serum parameters and faecal microflora of piglets

Copyright resides with the authors in terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 South African Licence. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/za Condition of use: The user may copy, distribute, transmit and adapt the work, but must recognise the authors and the South African Journal of Animal Science. ______________________________________________________________________________________ Abstract The experiment was conducted to investigate the effects of diets supplemented with glucose oxidase (GOD) on growth performance, serum parameters and faecal microflora of piglets. One hundred and twelve piglets (35 days old) were randomly assigned to two groups (four replicates per group, half male and half female, and 14 piglets per replicate) and fed a diet with or without 100 U GOD per kg, for 35 days. Feeding GOD caused a higher average daily weight gain and feed intake, and lower feed conversion ratio (FCR) of piglets. No significant difference was observed in the reference values of serum biochemical parameters between the groups fed with or without GOD. The contents of triiodothyronine, thyroxine and growth hormone of piglets fed GOD were higher than those of the control. Moreover, GOD supplementation suppressed the concentration of faecal Salmonella. The results showed that supplementation of GOD to diets promoted growth performance, increased the contents of growth and development-related hormones, and improved the faecal microflora of growing piglets. ______________________________________________________________________________________