Table 3.

Effects of constant chronic heat stress on the performance and physiological responses in growing-finishing pigs

Items	Treatments			P-value
	TN	HS	PF
Initial body weight, kg	34.06 ± 0.80	33.99 ± 0.71	34.14 ± 0.90	0.992
Finial body weight, kg	38.92 ± 1.34a	33.29 ± 0.56b	33.18 ± 0.83b	< 0.001
Average daily gain, kg/d	0.79 ± 0.04a	−0.10 ± 0.06b	− 0.14 ± 0.03b	< 0.001
Average daily feed intake, kg/d	1.37 ± 0.08a	0.54 ± 0.04b	0.51 ± 0.00b	< 0.001
Water intake, L/d	6.35 ± 0.36a	4.81 ± 0.26b	4.32 ± 0.28b	< 0.001
Ratio of water to feed	4.76 ± 0.44b	9.50 ± 1.38a	8.46 ± 0.55a	0.002
Rectal temperature, °C	39.5 ± 0.1b	41.0 ± 0.1a	39.1 ± 0.1c	< 0.001
Jugular temperature, °C	39.5 ± 0.1b	41.4 ± 0.1a	38.4 ± 0.1c	< 0.001
Back temperature, °C	39.8 ± 0.1b	41.7 ± 0.1a	38.7 ± 0.1c	< 0.001
Hind leg temperature, °C	39.9 ± 0.1b	41.9 ± 0.2a	38.8 ± 0.1c	< 0.001

TN, thermal neutral conditions (25 ± 1 °C); HS, heat stress conditions (35 ± 1 °C); PF, pair-fed with HS under TN conditions (25 ± 1 °C). Data were expressed as mean ± SEM (n = 8 for TN and PF, n = 7 for HS). Treatments with different superscript letters were significantly different at P < 0.05