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At weaning, pigs find physiological, environmental, social and nutritional stressors and undergo rapid changes in the structure of the small intestine. It is well known that the weaning period is associated with low feed consumption, poor growth rate, and an increased incidence of diarrhoea. The objective of this study was to determine the effects of weaning age and post-weaning feeding programme on pig performance and health. In experiment 1, 96 same gender pairs of pigs weaned at 3, 4 and 5 weeks of age were used in a 3 (weaning age) x 4 (dietary programme) factorial design experiment. Pigs received different amounts of a phase 1 diet (16.2 MJ/kg digestible energy (DE) and 16.2 g/kg lysine) and phase 2 diet (15.3 MJ/kg DE and 15.0 g/kg lysine): (A) very low (VL, 1 kg phase 1 and 3 kg phase 2 diet per pig); (B) low (L, 2 kg phase 1 and 6 kg phase 2 diet per pig); (C) medium (M, 3 kg phase 1 and 9 kg phase 2 diet per pig) or (D) high (H, 4 kg phase 1 and 12 kg phase 2 diet per pig), followed by a cereal based phase 3 diet (15.0 MJ/kg DE and 13.8 g/kg lysine) to 10 weeks of age. In experiment 2, faecal samples from 60 pigs weaned at 3, 4 and 5 weeks of age were collected at 10 days post-weaning and analysed for Escherichia coli and lactic acid bacteria counts.
In experiment 1, there were no interaction between effect between age and dietary programme on growth performance. Dietary programme did not affect growth performance from weaning to 10 weeks of age. From weaning to 10 weeks of age, increasing weaning age increased average daily gain (P<0.001), average daily feed intake (P<0.001), and improved feed conversion ratio (P<0.05). However, weaning age had no effect on pig weight at 10 weeks of age. In experiment 2, 3 week weaned pigs had higher faecal counts of E. coli (P<0.05) than 4 week weaned pigs and higher faecal counts of lactic acid bacteria (P>0.01) than 5 week weaned pigs at 10 days post-weaning. In conclusion, feeding higher amounts of phases 1 and 2 diets did not affect performance at any of the weaning ages tested.
Increasing weaning age, increased post-weaning growth performance, but did not increase pig weight at 10 weeks of age. Higher mortality rate and higher faecal E. coli counts were found in pigs weaned at 3 weeks compared to those weaned at 4 weeks suggesting negative health effects associated with earlier weaning.
Leliveld, L.M.C., Riemensperger , A.V., Gardiner, G.E., O'Doherty, J.V., Lynch, P.B. and Lawlor, P.G. 2013. Effect of weaning age and postweaning feeding programme on the growth performance of pigs to 10 weeks of age. Livestock Science157; 225–233. doi.org/10.1016/j.livsci.2013.06.030