The nutritional objective for pigs weaned at 3 weeks of age is to enable the most economical transition from sows milk to predominantly cereal/soya based diets in the grower/finisher period. Conventional ‘complex’ diets given to early weaned pigs usually consist of a range of high quality, and therefore relatively expensive, ingredients such as skim milk powder, fishmeal and cooked cereals. Often the aim is to provide a more than adequate supply of highly digestible proteins with a view to maximising weight gain over this initial period. An alternative strategy is to provide the weanling pigs with a low-cost cereal/soya diet which is balanced, in terms of Its amino acid complement, in a manner similar to the ideal protein. A variation on this theme is to use a more conventional diet as a ‘pre-starter’ diet for the first two weeks after weaning, before the introduction of a cereal/soya diet, as there is often a check in growth rate associated with simple diets during this period. The aim of this experiment was to evaluate these alternative dietary regimes with pigs weaned at 3 weeks of age.