Introduction: It is well known that lactose and whey powder were used as the main raw materials in weaning pig diet due to the fact that supplementation of milk by-products in weaning pig diet helped maintaining an enhanced intestinal environment in pig. Moreover, increasing of growth and enhancing feed intake of weaning pigs by supplementation of milk by-products has been known widely in weaning pigs’ diet. However, high levels of dietary milk byproducts induced the...
Basic Role of Feed Formulation Feed formulation is a process by which our knowledge of the nutrition of the animal can be translated into feeding programs which achieve our production objectives. These objectives typically include optimizing growth performance and producing a final carcass that can be converted into safe, healthy and appealing consumer meat products. This must be done in a profitable manner that concurrently contributes to environmental sustainability and animal...
Don Giesting (Cargill) discusses the characteristics of zearalenone and deoxynivalenol (DON), as well as their impact on reproduction and feed intake, during this Swine It interview with host Laura Greiner....
Young Dal Jang (University of Wisconsin–River Falls) This study was conducted to demonstrate the effects of second iron injection before weaning and iron levels in nursery diets on growth performance, hematological parameters, and fecal microbiome of pigs. A total of 70 newborn pigs from 7 sows were allotted to 4 treatments within litter, housed in farrowing crate without creep feed, and received the first dose (200 mg iron) at 2 to 3 d of age....
Andrea Bonetti (University of Bologna) At weaning, pigs develop significant stress with long-lasting effects on their performance and health. Botanicals include a wide variety of bioactive molecules able to control inflammation and oxidation. The aim of the study was to investigate the ability of a microencapsulated thymol-based blend of botanicals (BOT) to support piglets’ performance and health during an LPS inflammatory challenge. To examine...
Yihang Li (University of Delaware) Developmental plasticity during the prenatal and early postnatal periods allows animals to adapt quickly to their environment and efficiently construct organ systems crucial for survival. These adaptations, which may be irreversible later in life, can lead animals to develop beneficial survival strategies or predispose them to chronic diseases. The gastrointestinal (GI) tract is a highly adaptive organ, contending...
Brian Aldridge (University of Illinois) shares insights on the environmental, nutritional, and maternal factors that affect the microbiome of different animals, during the 11th Symposium on Gut Health in Production of Food Animals in St. Louis, USA....
Diana Ayala (Purina Animal Nutrition) Post-weaning diarrhea (PWD) is a serious health and welfare problem for the global swine industry. PWD is a multifactorial condition occurring the first 10–14 d after weaning; it is generally associated with the proliferation of pathogenic Escherichia coli groups, specifically enterotoxigenic E. coli (ETEC); however, PWD is also associated with several viral infections. Antibiotics are commonly used as a control...
Yihang Li (University of Delaware) gives a presentation on the gastrointestinal tract and the impact of early life development on later life diseases in pigs, during the 11th Symposium on Gut Health in Production of Food Animals in St. Louis, USA....
Young Dal Jang (University of Wisconsin–River Falls) speaks on the microbiome of pigs and dietary iron levels, during the 11th Symposium on Gut Health in Production of Food Animals in St. Louis, USA....
Andrea Bonetti (University of Bologna) gives a presentation on botanicals and their impact on inflammation and oxidation, during the 11th Symposium on Gut Health in Production of Food Animals in St. Louis, USA....
Diana Ayala (Purina Animal Nutrition) presents research to determine the underlying bacterial cause of PWD and a potential vertical transmission from sows to pre-weaned piglets, as well as to determine whether a customized direct-fed microbial (DFM)-based product could reduce the pathogens isolated from affected pigs, during the 11th Symposium on Gut Health in Production of Food Animals in St. Louis, USA....
Katherine Vande Pol (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign) talks about pre-mortality, decline in body temperature and measures to help, during this Swine It interview with host Laura Greiner....
In the current study, β-glucan present in fermentation products from Ganoderma lucidum (GLF) was tested as a feed supplement to evaluate its efficacy on growth performance and immunocompetence in weanling piglets suffering from physiological stress during weaning. This article focuses on after challenging with porcine circovirus (PCV) type 2, a supplementation with 50 mg GLF per kg feed also inhibited PCV-2 virus amplification, Figure 1. Detection of PCV-2 nucleic acid in...
Implications Nowadays, nearly one out of seven piglets dies before weaning in European commercial herds. Such a high mortality rate is a major source of economic loss and a subject for animal welfare concern. By providing energy and antibodies, colostrum plays an essential role in piglet survival. However, colostrum yield and concentrations of immunoglobulins were shown to be highly variable from sow to sow, and causes for this variability are not fully known yet. A better...
Introduction Maintenance of general health and prevention of infectious diseases are critically dependent on intestinal homeostasis and proper immune competence. In this regard, early colonization of the gut by microbiota as well as the concomitant development of the intestinal immune system has been proven to be important [1,2,3]. Immediately after birth, the intestine is colonized by bacteria derived from maternal and environmental sources [4,5]. During the early-life period, the...
Introduction The gut microbes of mammals are integral to the prevention of infectious diseases, maintenance of intestinal morphology, nutrient digestion and metabolism, immune modulation of the host (Nicholson et al., 2005; Romick-Rosendale et al., 2009; Hooper et al., 2012). Immediately after birth, the piglet gut is rapidly colonized by a complex and diverse microbiota derived from the sow and environment (Konstantinov et al., 2006). As the pig grows, the gut microbiota becomes...
Background The process of microbial colonization of the gut after birth plays an important role in the development of the neonatal immune system of mammals with implications during their whole life [1]. Immediately after birth, environmental and maternal bacteria, including colonization via the vagina, nipple surface, and milk, quickly colonize the offspring gut and establish the initial microbiota of the piglet [2,3,4]. The intestinal microbiota protects against colonization by...
The swine industry has largely gone to early weaning (3 weeks or earlier) especially in confinement production systems with environmentally controlled nurseries. Economic factors such as increasing the number of pig per sow per year and the need to maximize the capital cost of swine farrowing units by moving more sow through the facilities has...
INTRODUCTION Highly digestible feed ingredients and feed additives are used to help young pigs transition from sow’s milk to solid diets (Skinner et al., 2014; Valini et al., 2021). Thus, the cost of swine diets is greatest during the nursery phase of production due to the complexity of ingredients, e.g., whey, blood plasma and industrial amino acids. As compensatory growth has been associated with increased feed efficiency, it is a mechanism that may help to increase...