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Effects of feeding bamboo vinegar and acidifier as an antibiotic substitute on the growth performance and intestinal bacterial communities of weaned piglets

Abstract The experiment was designed to evaluate effects of feeding bamboo vinegar (BV) and acidifier to substitute antibiotic on the growth performance and intestinal bacterial communities of weaned piglets. Three hundred and sixty weaned piglets (body weight (BW) = 10 ± 2 kg) were allocated into three treatments for 25 days of experiment feeding, with three replicates (pen) per treatment. A basal diet was added with antibiotics (Control), 0.4% BV and 0.25% acidifier I (BVAI), or 0.4% BV and 0.25% acidifier II (BVAII), respectively. No significant differences were observed in feed intake, final weight, average daily gain and feed to gain ratio (P > 0.05) among different treatments. The species richness and bacterial community diversities in feces were higher for the pigs in treatment BVAI and BVAII than those of pigs in the Control (36.5 and 1.55, respectively), with a significant difference between BVAII and the Control (P < 0.05). The bacterial communities of pigs in BVAI and BVAII clustered together, forming a cluster we designated as Cluster C and separated from another cluster in pigs fed antibiotic designated as Cluster A in the Control treatment. The results indicate that the 0.4% BV and 0.25% acidifier can replace antibiotics in the diets for piglets without negative effects on production and allow for greater diversity of the intestinal bacterial community compared to antibiotics.