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During the post-weaning period, piglets face a large list of stressful challenge, including the need to eat new feed responding with variable periods of underfeeding and anorexia that make them vulnerable increasing the mortality rate. There are some strategies that may help to improve the development and function of the gastrointestinal tract and have been positively related to performance in the immediate post-weaning period. Feeding behaviour in mammals is based upon genetic components, and also on learning; a process which is established along the entire life to create preferences for some ingredients or flavours of the diet. It is well known that newborn mammals have the ability to approach their own mother after birth by the detection of the natural flavours of amniotic fluid. The hypothesis tested in the present study was that flavour choices in piglets during the suckling period may be influenced by the prenatal experience with those flavours. The aims of this study were (1) to determine whether suckling piglets show a preference for either the odour of maternal amniotic fluid or the odour of alien amniotic fluid (Experiment 1) and (2) to evaluate if pre-natal flavour exposure via maternal diet modifies flavour and creep-feed preferences in suckling and weaning piglets (Experiments 2 and 3, respectively).Through Triple-U-Testing Arena (TUTA), during 7 min, were offered a triple-choice stimulus among maternal amniotic fluid, alien amniotic fluid or water (Experiment 1) or among a flavour added to the late-gestation diet, a control flavour and water (Experiment 2). The same prenatal strategy was used to study the piglet’s preference for flavoured or unflavoured creep feed during the suckling period (Experiment 3). The results in Experiment 1 showed that suckling piglets preferred amniotic-fluid flavours from their own mother (P<0.001), but these preferences disappeared with age. Furthermore, in Experiment 2, prenatal flavour exposure via maternal diet significantly influenced a piglet’s preferences during lactation (P<0.001). However, in Experiment 3, prenatal flavour exposure did not improve the preference of piglets for a flavoured compared to an unflavoured creep feed diet.
In conclusion, pre-natal exposure to flavours via maternal diet influences the piglet’s preferences for new flavours, probably through a positive association between flavours and the hedonic reward of the uterine experience and a familiarity effect. Preferences acquired before birth seem to be long-lasting. This may be an important factor to reduce neophobia for specific flavours in young pigs.
exposure through maternal diets influences flavour preference in piglets before and after weaning. Animal Feed Science and Technology, 183; 160 – 167. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.anifeedsci.2013.04.023
