Effects of dietary supplementation of probiotic Enterococcus faecium on growth performance and gut microbiota in weaned piglets

AMB Express

Table 2 Growth performance of weaned piglets with different diet treatments

Items	Groups				SEM	P-value
Items	Diet 1	Diet 2	Diet 3	Diet 4	SEM	P-value
Initial body weight (kg)	7.03	7.03	7.03	7.02	0.01	0.84
Final body weight (kg)	9.91^b	10.32^a	9.97^b	10.07^ab	0.06	0.05
Average daily feed intake (g)
Days 1–7	145.29	157.57	137.86	151.29	3.73	0.29
Days 8–14	303.57	352.71	321.00	325.29	6.72	0.07
Days 1–14	230.57	262.57	236.57	245.00	4.74	0.08
Average daily gain (g)	205.69^b	235.02^a	210.18^b	218.08^ab	4.13	0.05
Body gain:feed intake (g/g)	0.89	0.90	0.89	0.89	0.01	0.99
Diarrhea rate (%)	1.26	1.85	1.37	1.13	0.18	0.50
Mortality rate (%)	8.79	3.30	2.20	2.20	6.884	0.08

Diet 1: containing 75 mg/kg aureomycin; Diet 2: containing 50 mg/kg aureomycin; Diet 3: containing 50 mg/kg aureomycin and 9 × 10⁵ CFU/g E. faecium; Diet 4: containing 50 mg/kg aureomycin and 1.2 × 10⁶ CFU/g E. faecium
^a,bMeans with different superscripts in a row differ (P < 0.05)