| The experiment was carried out to evaluate the effects of iron amino acid chelate on growth performance,iron apparent digestibility,skin color and blood index in weaned piglets, as compared to those of feed grade ferrous sulfate. One hundred and fifty weaned piglets(D×L×Y,28-day-old),with an average weight of(8.10±0.04) kg, were randomly allocated into five dietary treatments with three replicates(ten pins per pen).The control diet included 100 mg/kg iron from ferrous sulfate heptahydrate into the basal corn-soybean diet. The other dietary treatments were supplemented with 40, 80, 120, or 160 mg/kg of iron from ferrous amino acid complex in the control diet. Chromic oxide was included in the diets to act as the marker to determine the iron apparent digestibility. The results showed that the pigs fed iron-amino acid complex as an iron source had a statistically significant improvement in weight vain and feed conversion ratio. The monitored parameters, including mean red cell volume, hemoglobin concentration,serum iron and total iron binding capacity in the blood, value in skin color measurement increased singificantly as the level of iron-amino acid complex increased(P<0.05). Meanwhile, iron apparent digestibility was also increased significantly as the level of iron~amino acid complex increased(P<0.05).Therefore, the iron from iron-amino acid complex could improve growth performance and skin color more than ferrous sulfate supplementation in weaned piglets.
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