Increased weaning weight and higher performance with acid booster

Growing litter sizes on commercial swine farms are a fact, which leads to new challenges. Within growing litters the diversification is bigger and the animals are in average smaller at weaning. Aim is to achieve a minimum weaning weight of at least 5.0 kg after a three-weeks suckling period and average daily gain of around 220 g during the lactation period. In addition also the milk yield is influenced by the litter size – the bigger the litter size, the higher is the average milk yield per litter, but the smaller is the amount of milk per piglet. On this purpose a product including a blend of formic, acetic and propionic acid, a phytochemical and a permeabilizing complex (NGP, Biotronic® Top3, BIOMIN, Austria), was used in an experiment to test the effect on piglets’ growth and their sows’ performance.

In the experiment 24 sows and their suckling piglets were assigned to two groups with 12 sows each and 146 piglets in control group and 133 piglets in trial group (NGP). The beginning of the trial was at day 80 of gestation and ended after a three-weeks suckling period; in total the trial period was 56 days. The sows were fed commercial gestating and lactating sow diets. The diet of the control group contained no antibiotic or natural growth promoter products, whereas the diet of NGP was supplemented with 2.0 kg NGP/t of feed.

The weaning weight of the piglets after a three-weeks suckling period was significantly (p< 0.01) higher for the NGP group (5.94^a kg ± 1.5) compared to the control group (5.46^b kg ± 1.4). Also the average daily gain of the piglets was significantly (p< 0.01) higher in the NGP group (258^a g ± 55) compared to the control group (223^b g ± 63). Looking at the sows’ performance, the milk yield of the sows was higher in the NGP group (10.6 kg/d/sow ± 1.9) compared to the control group (10.2 kg/d/sow ± 1.2).

Supplementing the diet of sows with NGP enhanced piglet performance, showing significantly increased average daily gain (p< 0.01) of the piglets in the NGP group compared to the control group during the suckling period and also significantly increased weight (p< 0.01) of the piglets in the NGP group compared to the control group at weaning. Milk production of the sows was also positively influenced by the NGP.

Disclosure of Interest: None Declared.