Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 September 2010
The results of earlier work by Breirem have been reanalysed, and some recent results are presented. Breirem's results indicated that for pigs of 16 to 96 kg live weight and fasted for 4 to 9 days, heat production (HP) was related to live weight (LW) according to:
HP = 229 LW0·512
which could be converted to:
HP = 185 LW0·569
This equation gives values for fasting heat production which are about 20% higher than those usually estimated from Breirem's results on pigs of 16 to 196 kg. The recent results, for pigs fasted for 24 hr, were slightly higher than would be indicated by the latter equation. If the values derived from the reanalysis of Breirem's data are related to several estimates of the energy required for maintenance by pigs, values for km% between 87 to 103% are obtained.