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1. Introduction
The demand for “exotic” pork in Vietnam is continuously on the rise since disappearance of primary forest has led to a decreased wild boar population [1]. Furthermore, the intensively reared Moung indigenous and Vietnamese wild pigs yielded frustrating results to meet the local demand. This is with respect to various production intervention used were more of by trial and error in trying to increase their productivity without proper understanding of their actual anatomy and possibly physiology that has hampered the effort. It is believed that lack of data on gastrointestinal morphometry of these indigenous and wild pigs [2] is partially responsible for the failure improving the productivity of these pigs to an acceptable economic scale [3, 4]. This is especially so since gastric biometry is known to affect the efficiency of feed conversion and thus growth rate and survival [5–7]. The need for growth and survival has transformed the porcine stomach [8] to have a higher proportion of functional gland where the cardiac gland region covers about 50% of the total mucosal surface [9].
It is believed that the attempt of this study is to unveil the gastric histometry of Vietnamese indigenous, and Vietnamese wild pigs would enhance a better understanding towards rearing these highly demanded pigs on a commercial scale since the morphology of the gastrointestinal system does reflect the actual demand for optimum growth and thus productivity of these pigs.
2. Materials and Methods
2.1. Animals
The indigenous and wild pigs used in this study were the Muong indigenous and Vietnamese wild pig, respectively. Owing the strict conservation regulatory measures, the Wildlife Authority of Vietnam (WVA) has only permitted the usage of a total of nine Vietnamese wild pigs in this study. These wild Vietnamese pigs used were those trapped by WVA while invading the plantation during harvesting season. All Muong indigenous pigs were purchased from a farmer in the Hoa Binh province (Luong Son district), Vietnam.
The live body weight (kg) was recorded using a commercial scale with a 0.1 kg graduation. The body length (cm) was made using measuring...