Effects of adding supplemental tallow to diets containing 30% distillers dried grains with solubles on growth performance, carcass characteristics, and pork fat quality in growing–finishing pigs

Crossbred pigs (n = 315) were blocked by initial BW (6.8 ± 1.1 kg) and randomly assigned to 1 of 4 dietary treatments to evaluate the effects of dietary inclusion of tallow and corn distillers dried grains with solubles (DDGS) on pig growth, carcass traits, and pork fat quality. Diets consisted of a corn–soybean meal control diet (CON) and another 3 corn–soybean meal diets containing 5% tallow (T), 30% DDGS (D), or 5% tallow plus 30% DDGS (TD) in a 2 × 2 factorial arrangement of treatments. Diets were formulated to contain similar levels of available P and standardized ileal digestible Lys:ME among treatments. Pigs were housed in 40 pens, with 7 to 8 pigs per pen, to provide 10 replicates per treatment. Overall ADG did not differ among treatments. Compared with CON (2.76 kg/d) and T (2.59 kg/d), feeding 30% DDGS reduced the ADFI (interaction, P > 0.05) of pigs when fed with 5% tallow (2.45 kg/d for TD) but not when fed alone (2.76 kg/d for D). There was no effect of DDGS on overall G:F, but pigs fed diets with tallow had greater (P < 0.01) G:F (0.4) than pigs fed no tallow (0.37). Feeding tallow increased (P < 0.01) HCW, carcass yield, and backfat depth of pigs independent of DDGS. Feeding DDGS reduced (P < 0.01) belly firmness, as measured by belly flop angle, independent of tallow (D = 71.8° and TD = 57.7° vs. CON = 134.0° and T = 113.4°) and tallow also tended to reduce belly firmness (P < 0.10). Feeding DDGS and tallow reduced the concentration of SFA in belly fat, while the concentration of MUFA were increased (P < 0.01) by feeding tallow but not DDGS. Conversely, feeding DDGS increased (P < 0.01) the concentration of PUFA in belly fat but there was no effect of tallow. An interaction (P = 0.03) between DDGS and tallow for iodine value (IV) of belly fat was observed, in which addition of tallow or DDGS increased the IV of belly fat (64.22 for T and 71.22 for D vs. 59.01 for CON) but addition of both reduced IV (67.88 for TD). The IV of belly fat and backfat were correlated (P < 0.01) with the IV product of the diet fed in phase 3 (r = 0.49 and r = 0.81, respectively). In conclusion, adding 5% tallow to 30% DDGS diets improved G:F and carcass yield while reducing the IV of belly fat. However, pork fat firmness as measured by belly flop angle was not improved.