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Swine nutrition
Pigs require a number of essential nutrients to meet their needs for maintenance, growth, reproduction, lactation, and other functions. However, factors such as genetic variation, environment, availability of nutrients in feedstuffs, disease levels, and other stressors may increase the needed level of some nutrients for optimal performance and reproduction.
Swine require six general classes of nutrients: water, carbohydrates, fats, protein (amino acids), minerals, and vitamins. Energy, although not a specific nutrient, is an important nutritional component and is primarily derived from the oxidation of carbohydrates and fats. In addition, amino acids (from protein) that exceed the animal’s requirements for maintenance and tissue protein synthesis provide energy when their carbon skeletons are oxidized. Antibiotics, chemotherapeutic agents, microbial supplements (prebiotics and probiotics), enzymes, and other feed additives are often added to swine diets to increase the rate and efficiency of gain, to improve digestibility, and for other purposes, but they are not considered nutrients.
Pigs require a more concentrated diet and should be fed a less-fibrous feed than cattle, sheep, or horses. As they grow, their nutritional requirements change and the diet should meet their needs in various phases of growth and stages of production.
Recent lower prices in dried distillers grains with solubles suggest producers may want to take a second look at dried distillers grains with solubles (DDGS) for swine rations, a Kansas State University animal scientist said. "In the past, we have been very cautious about the addition of DDGS, based on the high cost of DDGS, relative to corn prices here in Kansas," said Mike Tokach, swine specialist with K-State Research and Extension. "In addition, there has...
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Selenium (Se) is an essential trace element for animal nutrition. Organic forms of selenium are recognized as more bioavailable than inorganic forms (Daniels, 1996) for most species including pigs (Mahan and Peters, 2004; Fortier and Matte, 2006). In a recent study (Fortier and Matte, 2006), we have shown that the improved selenium status of sows via supplementation with organic selenium (0.3 ppm Se as Sel-Plex® selenium yeast) has drastic consequences for embryos. In early gestation, selenium...
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The swine industry continues to move to earlier weaning. This trend is driven by economic factors such as improving the number of pigs per sow per year and the need to minimize the capital cost of farrowing facilities by moving more sows through the facilities. Tremendous strides have been made in improving performance in early-weaned pigs in the last decade. Several factors, including larger pigs at weaning, better nursery facilities and management as well as improved feeding programs,...
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The pig industry has a rich supply of feed ingredients and feed additives that are purported to have physiological effects on the pig, and thereby improve growth performance and/or protect the pig from diseases. Unfortunately, most of them have not been adequately evaluated, either at the level of physiological effect or at the level of economically important measures of performance. Interest in these products is justified under any circumstance, but will intensify as concern about antibiotic...
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The increased price for milk and milk products doesn't only affect consumers, but pork producers as well, said a Purdue University expert. A significant portion of a nursery pig's diet consists of lactose. Last year lactose prices were 30 cents a pound, and now prices have nearly tripled to 85 cents a pound. "This creates a challenge for swine nutritionists and producers to meet the animal's needs and keep diets economical," said Brian Richert, Purdue Extension...
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The term ‘organic minerals’ is misleading in that minerals themselves are inorganic, meaning that they do not contain carbon. However, the term has been adopted to refer to mineral supplements containing inorganic minerals bound to organic substrates. An example of this would be copper (Cu) proteinate, which would be classified as organic, as opposed to Cu sulfate, which would be classified as inorganic. In general, it has been assumed that minerals dissociate from their organic or...
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Recently, phytogenic feed additives have become more and more interesting for the feed industry. Phytogenics represent a fairly new category of feed additives with natural origin. Phytogenic compounds have traditionally been used as flavors and spices in human nutrition and medicine, as well as for food preservation. However, it is evident that this category of feed additives covers a large variety of substances with an even bigger number of active ingredients, including carvacrol, thymol,...
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Weaned piglets often have a poor feed intake, which compromises health, welfare and performance. Researchers from Wageningen University and Research Centre in The Netherlands think that these ‘problem piglets’ can grow better when they use the experiences from their mother. Weaned piglets often struggle with the change from drinking milk to eating solid feed. Many studies in the past tried to reduce this problem with changing the formulation of the solid feed, with different...
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The piglet at weaning is faced with numerous stressors that include separation from the sow and litter mates, being moved to a different shed and environmental conditions, and changes in feed type and feeder. In response to these stressors, the weaned piglet’s growth rate is reduced. This ‘post-wean growth check’ results in growth performance of the weaned piglet that is significantly below genetic potential. This growth deficit is commonly referred to as the ‘post-wean growth gap.’...
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Among the changes in agriculture in recent years are new rules applied to the feed industry, advances in animal genetics, and increased concern about animal welfare. In response to consumer demand, antibiotic growth promoters (AGPs) are no longer accepted in some countries, and it is expected that before long they will be banned worldwide. Factors motivating the ban on AGPs include antibiotic cross-resistance, residues in meat, eggs, and milk, and the possible development of...
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Pork has long been a staple food item in most Asia-Pacific countries. In fact, the Asia- Pacific region accounts for more pigs than the rest of the world combined - largely due to the massive pig population of China. However, the dominance of numbers does not necessarily imply superior efficiency of production and a review of the pig raising activities throughout the region would reveal a broad spectrum of production systems, variable efficiency and volatile economics. ...
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The notion of eating foods that have beneficial effects on consumer health above those of adequate nutrition is one that sits well with today’s consumers. Consequently the development of ‘functional foods’ and their impact on our health has received much attention over the last decade from scientists, health professionals, health policy makers, primary and food producers. The majority of the functional foods on the market today aim to offset the incidence of a number of major human...
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From Ghislaine Roch (Canada) presentation at Lallemand’s International Selenium yeast seminar (Grenaa, Denmark, 2007) Ghislaine Roch, independent feed nutritionist in Canada, has been working on antioxidants in animal production for more than ten years. She is convinced that modern animal production practices, with their associated stress factors and high metabolism, increase oxidative stress, leading to loss of performance, fertility and health problems for the animal, as well as...
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Pig producers will continue to fall short of reaching their target performance and economic potential unless they fully harness the benefits offered by feed enzymes, according to Danisco Animal Nutrition, who pioneered their development and use in pig and poultry feeds. “The contribution that enzymes can make at all stages of pig production, from weaners through to finishers, has been consistently demonstrated, yet some feed manufacturers and pig producers have still been relatively...
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Rising feed prices, higher welfare standards, more demanding consumers: keeping pig production profitable is becoming ever more challenging. And that's why JSR is now offering the services of an independent nutritionist Dr John Barber to its customers. His advice will help producers ensure that they squeeze every last ounce of performance from their pigs, fulfilling their genetic potential. With feed wheat prices now well above £100 per tonne, specialist pig nutritionist, Dr...
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The mineral requirements of high producing sows are largely unknown. The research to date demonstrates that both macro- and microminerals become depleted in sows with advancing parity and that high productivity exacerbates depletion. There apparently are periods during the reproductive cycle where both macro- and microminerals are needed in greater quantities. These periods generally occur during late gestation and lactation, but other times may also be critical. Simply fortifying...
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The escalating growth of the fuel ethanol industry in the United States of America continues to increase supplies of dried distillers’ grains with solubles available for use in livestock and poultry feeds. In 2004, there were 81 ethanol plants located in the US that produced a record 3.41 billion gallons of ethanol, a 21% increase over 2003 and representing 109% growth since 2000. Today there are 86 ethanol plants capable of producing 4.4 billion gallons of ethanol and another 38...
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Interest in chromium as an essential nutrient for pigs and as a possible means of manipulating growth performance and carcass composition was raised initially by reports in the 1960s of growth promotion in rats (Schroeder et al., 1963) and in turkey poults in the late 1970s (Steele and Rosebrough, 1979). Evidence with humans (Freund et al., 1979) and pigs (Steele et al., 1977) suggested chromium might exert its effects on growth and development by influencing insulin sensitivity and...
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Where once we considered feed protein to be strictly a means of supplying essential amino acids, we now know that certain peptides produced during gastrointestinal hydrolysis of protein have nutritional and physiological roles. The potential attributes of biological peptides have been documented in recent reviews (Power and Murphy, 1999) and include sensory, hormonal, antimicrobial, palatability enhancing, anti-carcinogenic, immunoactivity, antioxidant, mineral binding and nutritive...
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I’ve heard that feeding dead chicken from farm to pigs is not a good idea. Anyone knows if it’s true that pigs become “biters“? Could they get any disease from the chickens? ...
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