View article

Tea residue is a by-product of tea product consumption and has potential as a feed additive for livestock and poultry feeding. This paper investigated the effects of fermented Fuzhuan tea residue on nutrient digestibility, growth performance, diarrhea condition, intestinal morphology and structure, ion channel expression level, and biochemical and antioxidant indexes in the plasma of weaned piglets. It was confirmed that tea residue can improve diarrhea in weaned piglets, and the functional anti-diarrhea mechanism of tea was preliminarily revealed by whole-cell patch clamp detection, providing a reference for the rational utilization of tea residue in feeding production.

Thirty-six healthy 21-day-old weaned ternary piglets (Duroc × Landrace × Yorkshire) were randomly divided into two treatments with 18 replicates per treatment and one pig per replicate. The control group was fed with a basal diet and the test group was fed with diets supplemented with 1 kg/t tea residue. The test period was 28 days. The results are as follows: The addition of tea residue in the diet had no significant effect on the growth performance of weaned piglets (p > 0.05), but it could significantly reduce the diarrhea rate of piglets from 1 to 7 days and 1 to 28 days (p < 0.05). Compared with the control group, the dietary supplementation of tea residue had no significant effect on nutrient apparent digestibility, plasma biochemical indexes and plasma immune indexes (p > 0.05) but increased the content of glutathione in plasma (p < 0.05). Tea residue had no significant effect on the morphology of the jejunum and ileum of …