Diets containing high-quality animal proteins increase growth of early-weaned pigs

Abstract

A production experiment was conducted with 96 fourteen-day-old weaned male piglets to compare diets containing preparations of freeze-dried porcine plasma (P) and freeze-dried bovine colostrum (C) for 35 days after weaning. These diets were compared with a diet consisting of soybean meal (SP) and a diet with animal protein sources (AP). All diets contained varying proportions of bloodmeal, fishmeal, meat and bone meal, and skim milk powder. The levels of colostrum and porcine plasma were reduced from 60 g/kg to 25 g/kg after the first week of weaning. There were no effects of diet on performance in the first 4 days after weaning. However, between 18 and 21 days of age, pigs fed the SP diet ate less (P < 0.001) and grew slower (P = 0.002) than pigs fed diets containing AP, C, or P. In the second week after weaning, pigs fed diets with C and P showed a tendency to perform better (P�=�0.11) than those fed AP or SP. By 35 days of age, pigs fed diets containing colostrum and plasma were, on average, 6% heavier (P = 0.037) than pigs fed the AP and SP diets. The effects of dietary protein on voluntary feed intake were most pronounced up to 28 days of age in pigs fed the SP diet. There appeared little benefit of feeding C and P to early-weaned pigs over feeding a predominantly animal protein diet, although daily gain was 6% less (P�= 0.47). There were no differences (P > 0.05) in feed intake and growth rate between 28 and 35 days of age, and feed conversion efficiency was not altered by dietary protein source. Under these experimental conditions the use of bovine colostrum and a combination of animal protein sources was comparable with using freeze-dried porcine plasma in diets for early-weaned pigs. Inclusion of soybean meal in diets, however, resulted in inferior performance.

Improvement of growth performance and sanitary status of weaned piglets fed a bovine colostrum-supplemented diet1

“…Our results on the capacity of bovine colostrum to limit weaninginduced growth check of piglets during the colostrum feeding period were partially in agreement with literature data. Studies with large-sized experimental groups reported moderate effects on growth performance, essentially an increased ADG (Pluske etal., 1999;Dunshea et al, 2002;Boudry et al, 2008). Other researchers reported no modification of these criteria; however, these studies seemed to be conducted with an animal number inadequate to evaluate effects on growth performance (Boudry et al, 2007a;King et al, 2007King et al, , 2008a.…”

“…Most of those studies examined effects of a decreasing amount of bovine colostrum. Indeed, Dunshea et al (2002) reported increased ADG and ADFI, but not G:F, in piglets fed a bovine colostrum-supplemented diet during the first 7 d but not later during the additional 14 d of colostrum supplementation. This difference corresponded to a transition ofthe bovine colostrum rate from 6 to 2.5%.…”

“…These postweaning problems have been managed over decades biota (Marion et al, 2002;Huguet et al, 2006Huguet et al, , 2007King et al, 2007King et al, , 2008b. Other reports described also effects of bovine colostrum on growth performance with moderate capacity (Pluske et al, 1999;Dunshea et al, 2002;Boudry et al, 2008) or no capacity (Boudry et al, 2007a;King et al, 2007King et al, , 2008a to limit weaning-induced growth check. The last controversy could be attributed to experimental conditions such as duration of feeding the supplemented diet or size of experimental groups.…”

Strategic use of feed ingredients and feed additives to stimulate gut health and development in young pigs

“…This is because bovine colostrum contains high levels of immunoglobulins and growth factors such as IGF-1, and may be viewed as a "safer" product to feed than animal plasma. Dunshea et al (2002) compared diets containing preparations of freeze-dried porcine plasma and freeze-dried bovine colostrum after weaning at 14 days of age. These diets were compared with a diet consisting of soybean meal and a diet with animal protein sources.…”

A comparison of the effects of dietary spray-dried bovine colostrum and animal plasma on growth and intestinal histology in weaner pigs

“…Similar to spray-dried plasma, dietary inclusion of spray-dried bovine colostrum has been shown to improve feed intake and growth rate during the post-weaning period (Pluske et al, 1999b;Dunshea et al, 2002). Given the similarity between these two products, the same immunological mechanism of action may underlie the effects of each.…”