Estimation of feed intake (FI) for individual animals within a pen is needed in situations where more than one animal share a feeder during feeding trials. A partitioning method (PM) was previously published as a model to estimate the individual FI (IFI). Briefly, the IFI of a pig within the pen was calculated by partitioning IFI into IFI for maintenance (IFIm) and IFI for growth. In the PM, IFIm is determined based on the metabolic body weight (BW), which is calculated using the coefficient of 106 and exponent of 0.75. Two simulation studies were conducted to test the hypothesis that the use of different coefficients and exponents for metabolic BW to calculate IFIm improves the accuracy of the estimates of IFI for pigs, and that PM is applied to pigs fed in group-housing systems. The accuracy of prediction represented by difference between actual and estimated IFI was compared using PM, ratio (RM), or averaging method (AM). In simulation studies 1 and 2, the PM estimated IFI better than the AM and RM during most of the periods (p<0.05). The use of 0.60 as the exponent and the coefficient of 197 to calculate metabolic BW did not improve the accuracy of the IFI estimates in both simulation studies 1 and 2. The results imply that the use of 197 kcal×kg BW0.60 as metabolizable energy for maintenance in PM does not improve the accuracy of IFI estimations compared with the use of 106 kcal×kg BW0.75 and that the PM estimates the IFI of pigs with greater accuracy compared with the averaging or ratio methods in group-housing systems.
Keywords: Feed Consumption; Group-housing; Growth Performance; Maintenance Energy; Swine.