Abstract: 96 24 to 26 day old "L譟" weaned piglets (average bodyweight with 6.84 kg?0.16 kg) were used to study the effect of different form zinc oxide on the growth performance and diarrhea for 14 days feeding trial. The piglets were randomly allocated for four groups consisting of 3 replicates of 8 piglets each. The control group was fed the basal diet, the groups 1, 2, 3 were fed the basal diet adding 2800 g/t zinc oxide, 800 g/t fat-coated zinc oxide, 500 g/t nanometer zinc oxide respectively. The results showed that the average daily gain raised 15.26% (P<0.05), 9.88% (P<0.05) and 14.69 (P<0.05),the ratio of feed to gain reduced 9.59% (P<0.05), 7.53% (P<0.05) and 10.27% (P<0.05), the diarrhea ratio reduced 66.67% (P<0.05), 55.55% (P<0.05) and 55.55% (P<0.05) respectively compared with the control group, but the groups 1, 2, 3 were no significant differences in average daily gain, ratio of feed to gain and diarrhea ratio (P>0.05) among the zinc oxide, fat-coated zinc oxide and nanometer zinc oxide. It implied that the fat-coated and nanometer zinc oxide were a practicable alternative to high dosage zinc oxide.

Key words: zinc oxide; fat-coated zinc oxide; nanometer zinc oxide; diarrhea ratio; growth performance