The objective of this study was to evaluate performance, quantitative characteristics of carcass, and visceral responses of barrows maintained on heat stress enviroment and fed diets supplemented with ractopamine. It was used 48 animals with initial weight of 67.3 ± 3.8 kg, distributed in a randomized block design with four levels of ractopamine (0, 5, 10 and 20 mg/kg), each one with six replicates with two animals each. The experimental period lasted 28 days. Air temperature was 31.8 ± 2.0ºC, air humidity was 72.6 ± 10.2% and BGHI was 82.7 ± 2.8. Daily feed intake was not affect by the levels of ractopamine but they improved feed conversion and increased daily weight gain and final weight of the animals. The carcass quantitative characteristics were not affected by levels of ractopamine. The weights of the liver and kidneys showed linear increases accordingly to increase of ractopamine levels in the diet whereas weight of other organs and length of small intestine were not affected by supplementation with ractopamine. The optimum level of ractopamine for the best performance of barrows under heat stress is 20 mg/kg and it does not affect the quantitative characteristics of carcass.
additive; carcass; performance; thermal environment
