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Viewing piglet production efficiency through a dietary lens
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100 105 110
70 75 80 85 90 95
Daily feed intake
hile pig production has always posed challenges, today’s production landscape is especially complex. Continued outbreaks of African Swine Fever and supply chain disruptions are placing even more pressure on producers’ bottom lines and demanding better produc-
tion efficiencies to protect tightening margins. Precision piglet nutrition can help farmers manage threats to production efficiency.
Science sets the stage for an efficient start As research finds that piglet quality at 10 weeks of age has a large influence on life- time performance, efforts to drive efficiency must begin early in a pig’s life. Efficien- cy-focused interventions must also account for diverse production challenges. For example, achieving production economics requires managing digestion and nutri- ent uptake while limiting nutritional waste.
Nutrition, farm practices and economics drive efficiency Scientists at Trouw Nutrition studied how feeds, feed additives and technology in the diet relate to influence piglet performance and production efficiencies. Re- searchers evaluated how dietary considerations including lactose, milk replacers, protein sources, energy conversion, nutrient utilization and specialty ingredients in-
Figure 1. Relative performance of Kinetio technology (KIN) compared with a performance-driven diet (CON). KIN showed a significant daily gain and feed efficiency, for the lowest cost/kg gain and corrected feed cost.
CON KIN b a a b a a b b
teract in the animal. Their findings informed an efficiency-fo- cused feeding programme, Milkiwean Efficient Start, that considers piglets’ physiological development, nutrient utiliza- tion, and the challenges piglets experience during weaning. Farm practices and the economics of dietary ingredients were evaluated to optimize nutrient uptake and manage dietary cost. For example, the efficiency-focused feeding programme was formulated to start with an alternative liquid feed to boost pre-weaning development while reducing reliance on costly, labour-intensive practices.
Scientists also refined the diet formulation to improve the rate of nutrient digestion. There is variability among nutrients when it comes to digestion rates, and poorly digested nutri- ents can end up as food for pathogenic bacteria, spurring di- gestive problems. The Kinetio technology included in the effi- ciency-focused feeding programme uses degradation kinetics (speed of digestion) of protein, starch and fiber in the feed- stuffs to inform precise estimates for the amounts of nutri- tional elements to include in the diet. This approach to preci- sion nutrition optimizes pre-digestion in the stomach, maximizes nutrient absorption in the small intestine and keeps the amount of undigested protein in the large intestine as low as possible.
Beyond diet reformulation to boost efficiency, feed cost can be reduced by strategically utilizing dietary ingredients like lactose and gross energy. A richer understanding of how lac- tose influences piglet health and development informs a tai- lored approach to efficiently deliver the benefits of lactose in the diet. Similarly, improved understanding of gross-to-net energy conversion supports appropriate feed formulation while reducing the loss of gross energy through suboptimal digestive capacity and nutrient excretion.
Daily weight gain
Feed efficiency
Cost/kg gain (overall)
Corrected feed cost (overall)
Validating Performance and Economics The ultimate validation of any nutritional approach is seen in
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