Maternal and/or direct effects of including organic acid-preserved grain in sow and progeny diets on performance, microbial health and progeny carcass characteristics at slaughter
Prior to weaning in commercial swine production, there is a five-month period in which the development of the pig is primarily dependent on the sow; four months of gestation and one month of lactation. GIT development occurs early in embryonic life, reinforcing the influence maternal nutrition may have on its efficiency and functionality. Additionally, creep feeding, which is a long-established practice during the suckling phase, helps familiarise piglets with their post weaning diet and can stimulate the development of the relevant digestive enzymes. Previous research has shown beneficial improvements in the growth performance, gut health, nutrient digestibility and sustainability when cereals preserved with an organic acid based surfactant (treated cereals) were fed to weaner and finisher pigs. The objective of this experiment was to investigate the maternal and/or direct effect of feeding treated cereals on the lifetime performance and health of pigs compared to conventionally artificially dried cereal diets. A total of 80 sows were assigned to one of two lactation diets: dried cereal sow diet (DS) & treated cereal sow diet (TS) from day 100 of gestation to weaning. One day 10 post farrowing, two subgroups from each sow treatment were randomly assigned to one of two diets and their pigs were either fed a dried cereal pig diet (DP) or a treated cereal pig diet (TP), resulting in 4 dietary treatment groups for the rest of the experiment; DSDP, DSTP, TSDP & TSTP. All pigs remained on their assigned diets from creep to slaughter. There was no effect of dietary treatment on sow intake, sow weight, back fat loss or reproductive performance between dried or treated diets from day 100 of gestation until weaning. There was no effect of diet on litter size, average litter weight or average piglet weight from birth until weaning. However, there was a tendency for piglets offered treated creep from day 10 to weaning to have a higher average pig weight (P = 0.06) compared to those offered dried creep. There was no effect of treatment in the first stage weaner, however there was a direct feed effect on ADG, FCR and BW in the second stage weaner and finisher stages. The TP diet improved ADG and FCR and increased BW compared to the DP. Carcass characteristic analysis at slaughter is ongoing but provincial data is showing that pigs fed the TP diet had increased carcass weight, carcass ADG and carcass FCR compared to the DP.