Meta-analysis of relationship between weaning age and daily weight gain of piglets in the farrowing and nursery phases

Abstract

A systematic review of the literature was carried out to perform a meta-analysis to assess effects of age at weaning on the performance of piglets in the range of 14 to 42 days old. This step consisted in defining the databases and keywords to be employed in searching for papers for the meta-analysis. To that end, the databases Capes Publication Portal and Google Scholar were searched for researches published from 2001 to 2019. After the acceptance and exclusion criteria had been defined and applied, 28 papers were selected. The data were collected with Excel® software of Microsoft Office for later statistical analysis. Orthogonal polynomial contrasts were used and the linear and quadratic regression equations were fitted with hypotheses tested at the 5% significance level. The results confirmed the disadvantages of early weaning and the benefits of weaning at around 28 days old. In the farrowing phase, piglets weaned after 35 days had lower daily weight gain (DWG) (P =0.002) than those weaned at 27 days. The derivative of the regression of DWG while nursing on age revealed that a weaning age of 26.34 days yielded the maximum DWG among the ages assessed. After weaning, the maximum DWG was achieved by weaning piglets at 32.26 days. Given the performance of piglets in the farrowing and nursery phases, the results of this meta-analysis indicated the best weaning age was between 26 and 32 days.

The efficiency of growing hybrid piglets with different weights when placed under a liquid feeding system

“…Також Peet B (2003) вказує на більшу прибутковість дорощування поросят за вищої їх живої маси на початку цього періоду. Суттєве ж збільшення кількості народжених поросят у свиноматок спеціалізованих материнських порід і ліній призвело до зменшення великоплідності (Blavi et al, 2021;Farmer & Edwards, 2022) та зниження маси поросят при відлученні (Valentim et al, 2021;Holman et al, 2021). За повідомленнями (Schinckel et al, 2010;Koketsu et al, 2017), поросята нижчою масою при народженні зазвичай мають меншу вагу і при відлучені, яка, на їх думку, не компенсується ростом тварин на відгодівлі.…”

Effect of Fermented Feeds on Weaned Piglets Experimentally Infected with Escherichia coli

“…In industrial pig farming, piglets are weaned at increasingly earlier ages although they are psychologically immature and more susceptible to common post-weaning problems (Valentim et al, 2021). This process is considered stressful and can lead to changes in the immune system of the piglets (Kick et al, 2012).…”

Review: Nutritional regulation of muscle growth in neonatal swine

“…Two common issues faced by the swine industry each year are pigs born of a low birth weight (piglets with a birth weight in the bottom 10% in a litter) ( Riddersholm et al, 2021 ; Wu, 2018 ) and failure of piglets to thrive in early weaning scenarios ( Valentim et al, 2021 ). Low birth weight in piglets is largely due to the genetic pressures of increasing hyperprolific sows ( Riddersholm et al, 2021 ; Wu, 2018 ), while early weaning is typically done in response to market pressures from the highly vertically integrated pork market ( Valentim et al, 2021 ). Nevertheless, both represent considerable issues facing the growth of neonatal pigs.…”

“…This is due to multiple factors including piglet losses at birth from discarded low birth weight animals, and indirect profit loss from wasted resources related to sow breeding and care ( Wu et al, 2006 ; Mota-Rojas et al, 2011 ). Early weaning is done with the goal of decreasing the time between farrowing and rebreeding, leading to increased annual sow productivity ( Valentim et al, 2021 ). However, young piglets have a decreased ability to digest grain due to enzyme activity in the gut that favors milk digestion and will only gradually adapt to digest other carbohydrates and protein approaching D42 of age ( Engelsmann et al, 2022 ; Wei et al, 2021 ; Santos et al, 2018 ).…”