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Zinc storage in the tissues and organs of pigs fed graded levels of zinc in the tropics
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 September 2010
Summary
Thirty-six weaner pigs of average initial live weight of 16 kg, and of Large White and Landrace breeds, were allocated to six treatments differing in the level of zinc supplementation (from 0 to 500 p.p.m.) of a basal diet containing approximately 24% crude protein on a dry-matter basis. At the final live weight of about 50 kg, four pigs from each treatment were slaughtered and the hair, skin, lung, heart, kidney, pancreas, liver and spleen were sampled and frozen until they were analyzed for their zinc contents. Appetite and weight gain tended to be reduced at high levels of zinc supplementation (200 to 500 p.p.m.) though not significantly so. The average total zinc consumed per pig increased with increasing levels of zinc supplementation, but organ weights were not consistently affected by the levels of zinc in the diets. Only for the hair, skin, spleen and the kidneys was any significant variation in zinc concentration found among the treatment groups, but there were no consistent trends related to the level of dietary intake of Zn. Hair had the highest zinc concentration per kg of tissue, followed by the liver, pancreas, spleen, kidneys, heart, the lungs and the skin, in that order. The organs showed very little or no increase in the Zn concentration, in the Zn-supplemented groups compared with the unsupplemented, except that the liver showed slight increases up to a level of supplementation of 300 p.p.m. followed, however, by a decline in concentration at higher dietary levels of Zn.
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- Copyright © British Society of Animal Science 1972