Chhay Ty et al., 2005. Livest. Res. Rural Dev., 17 (7)

Eighteen crossbred (local*Landrace or Duroc) castrated male pigs weighing from 11 to 14 kg were used in a 2*3 factorial arrangement to study the effect of source of supplementary protein (fresh water spinach, fresh cassava leaves or a mixture [50:50 DM basis] of the two) and DL-methionine on growth performance traits with a basal diet of broken rice. The pigs were housed in individual pens and allotted at random to the three experimental diets within three blocks based on live weight. The feeding trial lasted for 100 days from 16 November to 24 February 2005. The pigs are up to 38% of their DM intake with no symptoms of HCN toxicity. Growth rates on all treatments increased as the pigs became heavier, but were always lower on the cassava leaf supplement compared with water spinach or the mixture of cassava leaves and water spinach. There were no differences between water spinach as the only protein supplement and the mixture of water spinach and cassava leaves. There was no effect on performance traits of the DL-methionine. It is concluded that there appear to be synergistic positive effects from combining two sources of protein-rich leaves as supplements to a low protein basal diet for growing pigs.