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Added Valine Does Not Improve Lactation Performance of Sows The NCR-42 Committee on Swine Nutrition conducted a cooperative study involving 231 sows at six experiment stations to determine whether increasing valine levels in a corn-soybean meals diet would improve the lactation performance of sows nursing large litters. The corn-soybean meal diet supplemented with 0.15% crystalline L-lysine-HCL contained 0.90% lysine. The sows were allowed ad libitum access to the feed. Valine intakes were 41, 48, 55 and 61 g/day and lysine intakes ranged between 51.5 and 52.7 g/day. Overall pig survival was 92% and liter sizes were between 10.1 and 10.3 at leaning. There were no differences in treatments for litter weanling weight, sow weight change or return to estrus interval. These results indicate that there were no advantages to increasing the valine level of sows nursing large litters (more than 10 pigs) and consuming a corn-soybean meal diet containing 0.90% lysine and 0.80% valine. Increasing dietary valine from 0.70 to 1.07% or increasing the valine:lysine ratio from 76 to 122% did not affect sow or litter performance.
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