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This study was conducted to investigate the effect of dietary supplementation of Illite on growth performance, carcass characteristics and fecal ammonia gas release in the growing and finishing pigs. A total of 90 crossbred pigs (18㎏, Landrace x Yorkshire x Duroc) were assigned to 3 treatments and randomly divided into 9 groups. Feeding period was divided into growing period (18∼60㎏) and finishing period(60∼110㎏). Pigs were fed one of basal diets supplemented with 0, 0.7 or 1.5% level of Illite. Average daily gain and feed conversion were significantly (p$lt;0.05) improved by the dietary supplementation of 1.5% Illite compared with other treatments during overall period. Moreover, the appearance of grade A carcass was increased by the dietary supplementation of 1.5% Illite. Fecal ammonia gas emission, during both growing and finishing periods were reduced (p$lt;0.05) by the dietary supplementation of 1.5% Illite. Feed cost per unit gain was linearly decreased by increasing the supplementation of lllite. According to this study, 1.5% supplementation of Illite is suitable not only for the improvement of pig performance, carcass quality and feed conversion, but also for the reduction of fecal ammonia gas emission and feed cost per body weight gain.
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