Article published the June 13, 2018
Introduction
Research has shown that adding high levels of copper (primarily from CuSO4 ) to diets fed to nursery pigs will result in improved growth performance. It is thought that copper acts as an antimicrobial-like feed additive in the gut of the young pig, which influences the microflora in the intestine and leads to improvements in growth performance. Copper also has been shown to improve A ...
Article published the March 1, 2018
Introduction
Nursery pigs often experience a lag in growth performance when transitioning from sows’ milk to dry feed during weaning. The lag is caused by several factors, including the dietary and environmental stresses associated with weaning. This post-weaning challenge can be associated with suppressed performance, diarrhea, and other intestinal health problems. While compensatory gain ...
Article published the February 22, 2018
Introduction
The use of standardized ileal digestible (SID) AA has become a standard approach in diet formulation as it helps to accurately meet a pig’s requirement, and enhance the ingredient utilization. Lysine is the first limiting AA in corn and soybean meal diets for swine. In addition, Lys is used to estimate the requirement of other essential AA; which are expressed as a ratio relati ...
Article published the February 15, 2018
Introduction
In order to lower feed costs, crystalline AA are used routinely in swine diets to replace a portion of the soybean meal. The AA that are currently available to add to swine diets include lysine, threonine, methionine, tryptophan, and valine. The increased availability of crystalline AA sources has created the opportunity to formulate grain-based diets to the fifth or sixth limiting A ...
Article published the February 5, 2018
Introduction
The conventional management in the swine industry is for weaning to start the sow’s next reproductive cycle. However, breeding sows during lactation has been proposed as an alternative that may increase sow productivity. If sows conceive while lactating, farrowing interval and nonproductive days may be decreased, increasing the litters per sow per year. Early attempts to breed ...
Article published the November 16, 2017
Introduction
It is generally thought that as diets are ground to a smaller mean particle size, a linear improvement in nutrient utilization and pig performance will be observed. Research has demonstrated this benefit when particle size is reduced from 1,000 microns to approximately 600 microns. However, further reduction of particle size below 600 microns has not shown consistent benefits when fe ...
Article published the November 2, 2017
Introduction
The increase in litter size over recent decades has reduced the uterine space available for fetal growth and development, thus reducing individual piglet birth weight. Consequently, lower birth weight reduces piglet survivability, wean weight, and market weight. However, few nutritional options have been identified to mitigate reduced birth weight. There is evidence that increasing f ...
Article published the September 14, 2017
Gut remodeling after weaning
Heo et al. (2012) provide an excellent review of the gastrointestinal changes that occur in weaned pigs after weaning. As a brief summary of their review, the gastrointestinal changes at weaning include:
Increased stomach gastric pH because of decreased acid secretion capacity and decreased lactic acid production due to lowered lactose intake. These changes ...
Participation in Forum on March 16, 2017
High doses of phytase have shown benefits in several experiments with nursery pigs. While I believe that some of the benefit is due to release of other nutrients, I also believe that pigs were under their phosphorus requirements in many of these studies. Thus, providing high doses of phytase allows maximum phosphorus release. Thus, there is good evidence that we should consider high doses, especia ...
Article published the March 10, 2017
Q: What have been the most interesting findings in your latest researches on minerals?
A: I will break it down into a couple of major areas. Recently, we've done a lot of work on calcium and phosphorus, in terms of major minerals, and also with sodium and chloride levels. First on the calcium and phosphorus: in terms of phosphorus requirements, what we are finding is that the pigs in the fiel ...