Sweet potatoes are nutritious, but they must be fed to pigs properly: four taboos to note

    Autumn is approaching, and many farmers' sweet potato harvests are almost ready. Sweet potatoes are sweet and palatable, nutritious, and cheap, making them good pig feed. However, improper feeding can cause pigs to eat less, stop eating, lose weight, or even suffer poisoning. Therefore, when feeding sweet potatoes, four points must be noted:

Pig

    1. Do not feed diseased tubers. For tubers with black spot disease, even boiling, steaming, or roasting cannot destroy their toxicity, and feeding diseased tubers or their residue to pigs can easily cause poisoning. Symptoms of poisoning in pigs that eat diseased tubers often appear 3-4 days after consumption, such as elevated body temperature, complete loss of appetite, constipation, dry black spherical feces, and the presence of mucus and blood. Therefore, diseased tubers must never be fed to pigs.

    2. Do not feed blindly in large amounts. The amount of sweet potatoes fed should be determined by the pig's body weight, age, sex, and other factors. If the feeding amount is too large, the pig will eat less of other feed, the nutrition will not be comprehensive, and growth and development will be hindered. Finishing pigs weighing more than 60 kg can be fed a somewhat larger amount, but each pig should still not be given more than 8 kg per day.

    3. Do not neglect scientific feeding. To keep pigs' appetite strong, feed them little but often, feed at fixed times and in fixed amounts, and improve the digestive capacity of the pig's gastrointestinal tract. If mixed with green feed, it is best to feed the green feed first and the sweet potatoes afterward; if mixed with concentrated feed, the ratio should be controlled. If feeding cooked sweet potatoes, feed them promptly after cooking. At the same time, pay attention to keeping feeding utensils clean to prevent sweet potatoes from spoiling from being stored too long.

    4. Do not use them as the main feed for breeding pigs or piglets. Because sweet potatoes contain little protein and calcium and phosphorus, if used as the main feed for breeding pigs and piglets, it can easily lead to unclear estrus and miscarriage in sows, insufficient milk in lactating sows; edema and emaciation in piglets; and reduced libido and declining semen quality in boars. Therefore, the proportion of sweet potatoes in the feed should not exceed 15% for sows, 30% for piglets, and 10% for boars.