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Iron injections are vital against iron deficiency anemia. However, in large-scale production settings, this practice is laborious, compromises immunity, facilitates disease transmission and is potentially a welfare issue. An alternative is iron supplementation through voluntary intake, encouraged by flavor conditioning from the sow. This experiment explored the effects on piglets of maternal flavor conditioning and the voluntary intake of anise-flavored, iron-supplemented creep feed compared with iron injections.
Methods: The experiment was a 2 × 2 factorial arrangement: ±maternal exposure to dietary anise flavour and ±intramuscular injections of piglets. Twenty-three sows and their litters (242 piglets) were randomly allocated to one of four treatments (n = 5 or 6 per treatment): no flavour plus no injection; no flavour plus iron injection; flavour plus no injection; and flavour plus iron injection. All piglets could access anise-flavored, iron-supplemented creep feed (organic and inorganic forms) from day 2 of birth. Sow feed intake and milk anethole concentration, piglet body weight and average daily gain, creep feed disappearance, piglet behavioral time budgets, and piglet blood glucose and hemoglobin concentrations were determined.
Results: Over the four-week study, the only significant differences found were that iron-injected piglets had reduced blood glucose on day 14 and that maternal flavor provision increased the frequency of piglet creep feed interaction and decreased the frequency of suckling events.
Conclusion: In summary, maternal flavor conditioning reduced piglet creep feed neophobia without influencing consumption. The supplementation of creep feed with iron and anise flavor to piglets under the conditions of this trial was effective in preventing iron deficiency anemia, regardless of exposure to maternal flavoring conditioning.
Kristen, R., Bathgate, R., Cronin, G. M., Hall, E., Possell, M., & O’Shea, C. J. (2024). Effect of Maternal Flavour Conditioning Combined with Organic and Inorganic Iron-Supplemented Creep Feed on Piglet Performance and Haemoglobin Status. Animals, 14(9), 1263. https://doi.org/10.3390/ani14091263