Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 November 2017
It is now known that growing pigs can utilise considerable quantities of non-starch polysaccharides (NSP) in their diets (Bulman et al., 1989). These materials are fermented in the hind-gut of the animal to produce volatile fatty acids (VFAs) which are then used as an energy source, unlike starch from conventional cereal-based rations which is digested by the host enzymes of the animals. Little is known about how animals adjust to a sudden change in dietary energy source and the present experiments were designed to investigate the metabolic adaptations in pigs fed either a conventional cereal-based diet or one containing 300 g sugar beet pulp/kg diet.