Influence of cooking upon the nutritive value of potato and maize in diets for growing pigs

Diets containing 50% of the dry matter (DM) as barley, cooked flaked maize, ground maize, cooked flaked potato, or 22% of the DM as raw potato had metabolisable energy (ME) values of 14.5, 15.2, 15.1, 15.1 and 14.5 MJ/kg DM respectively, and efficiencies of N retention of 0.40, 0.41, 0.42, 0.42 and 0.31. Cooking potato had a positive effect upon the ME value and the efficiency with which ingested nitrogen (N) was retained. Any single nutritive value for raw potato was considered inappropriate due to the influence of raw potato on the digestibility of other diet components. Pigs fed a diet containing cooked potato grew faster and converted feed to live weight more efficiently than pigs fed the same amount of a diet containing between 14 and 26% of the DM as raw potato. The presence of raw potato in diets was also found to reduce appetite. Cooking maize appeared to have only a small effect upon the nutritive value of maize. Pigs fed diets containing cooked flaked maize grew slightly faster than pigs fed ground maize.