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The performance of sows plays an important role in the productivity of the whole swine industry. Flavors have been widely used in nursery pig diets as palatability enhancers and feed attractants to increase feed intake. This study was conducted to evaluate the effect of flavor on reproductive performance and fecal microbiota of sows during late gestation and lactation. A total of 20 healthy Yorkshire sows were fed a corn-soybean basal diet unsupplemented or supplemented with 0.1% flavor compound from day 90 of gestation to day 25 post-farrowing, and then the piglets were weaned. The reproductive performance and the fecal microbiota of sows were analyzed.
Compared with the controls, flavor supplementation in maternal diets increased weaning litter weight, litter weight gain, weaning body weight, and average daily gain of piglets. There was a trend of increase in the average daily feed intake of sows by maternal dietary flavor addition. The backfat thickness and litter size were not affected by flavor supplementation. The 16S rRNA analysis showed that flavor supplementation significantly increased the abundance of Phascolarctobacterium, but significantly decreased genera Terrisporobacter, Alloprevotella, Clostridium_sensu_stricto_1, and Escherichia-shigella. Spearman correlation analysis showed that Phascolarctobacterum was positively correlated with the average daily feed intake of sows, the litter weight gain and average daily gain of piglets. In contrast, Clostridium_sensu_stricto_1 and unclassified_f__Lachnospiraceae were negatively correlated with the litter weight gain and average daily gain of piglets.
Taken together, dietary flavor supplementation improved the reproductive performance of the sows, which was associated with enhanced beneficial microbiota and decreased potentially pathogenic bacteria in the sows.
Wang R, Liu N, Yang Y, Lei Y, Lyu J, Dai Z, Kim I, Li J, Wu Z, Li D. Flavor supplementation during late gestation and lactation periods increases the reproductive performance and alters fecal microbiota of the sows. Animal Nutrition. 2021; 7(3): 679-687. https://doi.org/10.1016%2Fj.aninu.2021.01.007