Figure 1.
The general scheme of this study. Firstly, 24 pigs were used and took turns into the net energy (NE) assay and metabolic energy (ME) assay. Secondly, data were handled to obtain NE intake, NE for maintenance (NEm), NE retained as protein (NEp), and NE retained as lipid (NEl). Thirdly, data from the NE assay were divided into four groups based on their body weight and used to evaluate the NE partition patterns of growing–finishing pigs. Finally, data of the NE assay and the ME assay were mixed and randomly split into a training data set containing 75% samples and a testing data set containing the remaining samples. The best-fitted nonlinear regression (NLR) models and artificial neural networks (ANN) models were generated on the training data set and were further compared on the testing data set.