Methionine supplementation of opaque-2 corns for growing swine.

Three trials were conducted in an experiment with growing swine to determine the capacity of opaque-2 corns to provide adequate dietary methionine. The corns fed contained 0.275, 0.279 and 0.227% methionine+ cystine. Neither rate of gain, gain/feed nor PER was significantly improved by supplementing the basal corn diets with 0.07, 0.14, 0.21 or 0.28% DL-methionine. The data suggest that the methionine+cystine requirement of the growing pig may be somewhat less than commonly accepted values. The possibility of destruction of methionine and cystine in process of determining the amino acid composition of the corn was recognized, and correction factors were developed to adjust the methionine and cystine contents of the corn to avoid underestimating the amounts of the amino acids in the corns fed.