PARTNER FEATURE ▶▶▶
Can bacteria enhance piglet growth?
It isn’t too long ago that antibiotic growth promoters were almost part of pig feed formulation. Nowadays, the market opportunities are good for other substances to help piglets grow faster. In that context, it’s interesting to see what a combination of several Bacilli can do.
BY LENA RAFF, CHR. HANSEN P
rofitability within pig farming is affected by many factors. Of course, with over 70% of the cost of pro- ducing a finished pig being the feed put into it, the effective conversion of this feed into growth is of
critical importance. Research into optimising pig perfor- mance through genetics, housing and feeding is constantly being undertaken. Another essential focus area for producers is the control of disease. Traditionally there has been much reliance on antibiotics for this, although this has dramatically changed in recent years. Antibiotics were discovered in the late 1920s, and the advan- tage of using antibiotics to promote growth and feed efficien- cy in farm animals has been known since the mid-20th centu- ry. These agents have been used globally for decades since then for growth promotion, and the use intensified as farming became industrialised. Antibiotic growth promoters (AGPs) were thus, in some decades, almost seen as an ingredient in pig feed formulation. Today, times have changed and the focus is on the increase in antibiotic resistance and the threat it poses to humans as well
Table 1 – Trial performed in a US re- search facility testing a dual strain probiotic in grower-finisher pigs.
Average Daily Gain, g/day Feed Conversion Ratio, g/g
Control 1,057 2.42
Probiotic** 1,052 2.31*
* P<0.01 ** Probiotic product consisting of Bacillus subtilis and Bacillus licheniformis Source: Internal data.
34 ▶PIG PROGRESS | Volume 36, No. 8, 2020
as animals. The shift away from AGPs has opened the market space for other, and often natural, feed additives. The number of such products is increasing rapidly and the industry, with the focus on lowering the use of prophylactic antibiotics and AGPs, is continuing to look for alternative solutions. Concur- rently, there has been a shift in the way that bacteria are viewed. For a long time, bacteria were regarded as being bad and harmful. This view has changed and the industry has now started to differentiate between good bacteria that the host can benefit from and bad bacteria – pathogens – that need to be controlled.
Well-documented beneficial effects Some of these good bacteria are spore-forming Bacilli. Probi- otic products containing these Bacilli have been on the mar- ket for many years and their beneficial effects are well recog- nised and documented. These probiotics are naturally designed to go into all types of feed, as their spore-forming quality makes them capable of surviving high temperatures that occur during the pelleting of feed. They have a long shelf life compared to lactic acid bacteria, even in hot climates, and the Bacilli can survive being mixed in premixes. A feature of this kind of bacteria is their excretion of enzymes as part of their life cycle. The enzymes they excrete vary de- pending on what is in the surrounding environment. Break- ing down a diet involves a collaboration of many different en- zymes that need to work in a coordinated way to break down the fibres, protein and polysaccharides. Some Bacilli excrete enzymes in a sufficient amount into the lumen so that the host animal benefits as digestibility of the feed is improved. This means that the pool of nutrients becomes larger with a consequent effect of improved performance of the pig. However, not all spore-forming bacterial strains excrete the same enzymes at the same level, and strains can differ in oth- er features, too. Strains matter. This increased availability of nutrients, coupled with most probiotic strains, also confers health benefit features that will be seen as improved growth in the pig, whether it’s a piglet or a grower-finisher pig.
Combination of two strains BioPlus brand covers in-feed probiotics consisting of two bacterial strains, Bacillus subtilis and Bacillus licheniformis. In a meta-analysis involving 10,000 weaned piglets across
ILLUSTRATION: SHUTTERSTOCK
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