Table 8.

The effect of creep feed composition and form and nursery diet complexity on apparent ileal digestibility (AID) and apparent total tract digestibility (ATTD) of nutrients and energy after weaning

	Creep1					Nursery2			P-value3
	COM	LMR	PMR	NO	SEM4	HIGH	LOW	SEM4	CREEP	NURSERY
No.5	14	14	14	14		28	28
AID, %
Phase I
Organic matter	66.4	63.6	68.3	67.8	3.8	68.8	64.2	2.5	0.574	0.076
Crude protein	53.9	53.2	58.1	54.1	5.5	56.1	53.6	4.8	0.745	0.463
Phase III
Organic matter	64.2	63.0	61.7	61.7	2.3	63.2	62.1	2.0	0.792	0.583
Crude protein	74.8	72.1	72.6	72.0	1.8	74.5	71.6	1.3	0.583	0.108
ATTD
Phase III
Organic matter, %	77.5	81.5	81.3	80.0	1.5	79.8	80.3	1.4	0.199	0.699
GE, %	78.4	82.3	80.8	82.5	1.7	80.6	81.5	1.3	0.180	0.536
DE, kcal/kg	3,548	3,723	3,653	3,729	73	3,627	3,700	52	0.199	0.255

¹Creep feed treatments: commercial creep feed from Floradale Feed Mill (Floradale, ON, Canada; micropellets; COM), liquid milk replacer (LMR), and pelleted milk replacer (micropellets; PMR) from Grober Nutrition (Cambridge, ON, Canada), or no creep feed offered (NO). Creep feed treatments were implemented at 5.4 ± 0.3 days of age and until weaning (21.3 ± 2.1 days of age).

²Nursery feed treatments: HIGH, nursery diets that contained protein from plant and animal sources; LOW, nursery diets with corn and soybean meal as the main protein sources. Diets were fed for 7, 14, and 17 days in phases I, II, and III, respectively.

³ P-values for the main effects of creep (CREEP) and nursery dietary treatment (NURSERY).

⁴Maximum value for the standard error of the means.

⁵Number litters evaluated.