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A study was conducted to investigate short and long-term effects of manipulating dietary CP content and diet quality in weanling diets on health and performance of piglets by using a 2 × 2 factorial combination of CP inclusion (high-CP, 230 g of CP/kg vs. low-CP, 170 g of CP/kg) and diet quality (high-quality, cooked cereals, and animal protein vs. low-quality, raw cereals, and plant protein). Diets were fed ad libitum for 14 d post-weaning to 400 piglets weaned at 29.4 ± 3.1 d of age and 9.9 ± 1.0 kg of BW. At weaning piglets were removed from the sow and assigned to the 4 experimental diets. Piglets were housed in groups of 6 or 7 animals per pen. This resulted in 15 replicates per treatment throughout the weaning phase (<30 kg) and 5 replicates per treatment in the grower-finisher phase (>30 kg). From d 14 to slaughter at 104 ± 3 kg, all pigs were fed the same series of standard commercial diets.
High-quality diets promoted gut health as indicated by improved faecal lactobacilli to coliform ratio (P = 0.002) and decreased faecal enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli counts on d 11 post-weaning (P = 0.028), reducing the risk of post-weaning diarrhoea and improving pig health from weaning to the end of the weanling phase. Reducing CP content had no effect on gut health. High-CP (P = 0.053) and high-quality (P = 0.025) diets independently increased ADG during the first 14 d post-weaning compared with low-CP and low-quality diets, respectively. There were no interactions between dietary CP content and quality on any of the response criteria investigated. Despite differences in the immediate post-weaning period, there was no effect of manipulating diet quality or CP content for 2 wk post-weaning on lifetime performance with pigs reaching slaughter weight in 128 ± 7 d.
These results indicate that high-quality diets may protect pig gut health during the immediate post-weaning period. However, it may be possible to use less expensive, decreased quality weanling diets without any adverse effects on long-term performance when weaning older, heavier pigs and where health status, environmental control, and stock management are all maintained to a high standard.
IJ Wellock, JG M Houdijk, AC Miller, BP Gill and I Kyriazakis. 2009. Journal of Animal Science. 87:1261-1269.
