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Three years after Keystone (USA), more than 300 people gathered in Kliczkow (Poland) for the Digestive Physiology of Pigs (DPP) conference. The team of microbiologists, nutritionists and veterinarians from the Institute of Animal Nutrition at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine in Berlin University presented findings on the immediate post weaning colonization of enterobacteria in weaned piglets fed different zinc oxide sources (standard feed grade ZnO; HiZox®, Animine) and doses (150, 300 and 3000 mg/kg). Daily fecal samples were used to detect a range of relevant enterobacterial genes via PCR assays.
The development of the Escherichia group (measured by 16S rDNA) showed an increase until 4 days after weaning in pigs fed the 150mg/kg zinc diets, followed by a drastic decline until day 10 after weaning. However, the 300mg/kg (HiZox®) as well as the 3000mg/kg (ZnO) diets showed an earlier decline already 2 days after weaning, which led to less colonization of the Escherichia group than in the other trial groups. The most prevalent enterobacterial toxin gene was the E. coli estIIb. Contrary to the colonization of enterobacteria, a severe decrease of the amount of estIIb genes was visible in animals fed the 3000mg/kg diet already after the first day after weaning. A steady decline was observed in all other trial groups; the 300mg/kg (HiZox®) led to a sharper decrease than 150mg/kg. Generally, the impact of dietary zinc was lessened in all experimental groups 14 days after weaning. It was concluded that the immediate effect of zinc oxide supplementation ranged from 3-4 days until 8-10 days after weaning.
Detected E. coli fimbriae
June 4, 2015 - Animine
