Husbandry practices and gut health outcomes in weaned piglets: A review

Abstract

The immediate post-weaning period is one of the most stressful phases in a pig's life, and during this period, piglets are usually exposed to environmental, social and psychological stressors which have direct or indirect effects on gut health and overall growth performance. In this review, the impact of husbandry practices on gut health outcomes and performance of piglets is discussed. Husbandry practices in the swine barn generally include nutrition and management practices, maintenance of hygienic standards and disease prevention protocols, and animal welfare considerations. Poor husbandry practices could result in reduced feed intake, stress and disease conditions, and consequently affect gut health and performance in weaned piglets. Reduced feed intake is a major risk factor for impaired gut structure and function and therefore a key goal is to maximize feed intake in newly weaned piglets. In weaned piglets, crowding stress could reduce pig performance, favor the proliferation of pathogenic bacteria resulting in diarrhea, stimulate immune responses and interfere with beneficial microbial activities in the gut. Sanitation conditions in the swine barn plays an important role for optimal piglet performance, because unclean conditions reduced growth performance, shifted nutrient requirements to support the immune system and negatively affected the gut morphology in weaned piglets. Appropriate biosecurity measures need to be designed to prevent disease entry and spread within a swine operation, which in turn helps to keep all pigs and piglets healthy. Collectively, husbandry practices relating to feeding and nutrition, animal welfare, biosecurity and disease prevention are important determinants of gut health and piglet performance. Thus, it is suggested that adopting high husbandry practices is a critical piece in strategies aimed at raising pigs without the use of in-feed antibiotics.

Laminarin-rich extract improves growth performance, small intestinal morphology, gene expression of nutrient transporters and the large intestinal microbial composition of piglets during the critical post-weaning period

“…This increase was independent of live weight. Longer villi are associated with increased digestive and absorptive function (23) . In the present study, laminarin supplementation increased the expression of the glucose transporters SLC2A8/ GLUT8 (duodenum), SLC2A2/GLUT2 and SLC2A7/GLUT7 (jejunum), the peptide transporter SLC15A1/PEPT1 (jejunum), the amino acid transporter SLC6A19 (duodenum and ileum) and the long-chain fatty acid transporter FABP2 (jejunum).…”

Probiotics as alternatives to antibiotics in treating post-weaning diarrhoea in pigs: Review paper

“…Moreover, factors that occur immediately after weaning, including housing sanitation, the numbers of piglets per pen, feeding regimes and pig flow systems, contribute greatly to the scourge of PWD. As reviewed by Jayaraman & Nyachoti (2017), the sanitation status of the swine environment in commercial production has a direct bearing on pig health. In the same paper, it is reported that poor sanitary conditions in a pig farm are a precursor to low inflammation in weaned piglets.…”

The influece of different microclimate conditions on productive indices and safety of pigs

“…Ключевые слова: микроклимат, поросята, продуктивность, резистентность, сохранность. Вплив різних умов мікроклімату на продуктивні показники та збереженість свиней Аналіз останніх досліджень і публікацій. В даний час у наукових дослідженнях фахівців, як в Україні, так і за кордоном превалюють роботи з питань лікування і профілактики заразних та паразитарних хвороб, але недостатньо досліджень з профілактики незаразної патології (Danchuk, Karpovskyі, Trokoz, &Postoі, 2017;Lukashchuk, Slivinska, &Shcherbatyy, 2018;Solà-Oriol, &Gasa, 2017), а відповідно до літературних даних захворюваність та загибель свиней становить 80 -90 %, що спричиняє значні збитки (Einarsson, Brandt, Lundeheim, & Madej, 2008;Jayaraman, & Nyachoti, 2017;Pluske, Turpin, & Kim, 2018;Zaleski, & Hacker, 1993).…”