Improved litter weight gain with fruit-milk-anise flavour
Lactating sows and piglets profit from a fruit-milk-anise flavour in the sows diet. This is the conclusion from a Chinese study.
Researchers at the Institute of Animal Nutrition at the Sichuan Agricultural University in China examined the effects of sodium butyrate and flavours on feed intake of lactating sows and growth performance of piglets.
A total of 52 primiparous sows (Large White) were randomly divided into four treatments (n = 13) and received 6 g/kg sodium butyrate (SB), fruit-milk (FM) flavour and fruit-milk-anise (FMA) flavour with pair feeding to the mothers receiving the control diet. The feeding trial lasted for 29 days, including 21 days of nursing and 8 days of post-weaning period, respectively.
The nursing and weaning piglets received creep diets with the same flavour or SB supplement as their mother. The results showed that FMA flavour increased average daily feed intake (ADFI) of lactating sows (P < 0.01), as well as improved litter weight gain (p =" 0.05)" and adfi (p >< 0.01) of nursing pigs among treatments. indeed, greater adfi and average daily gain of weaning piglets for the initial 8 days after weaning was observed in the fma group compared with those in the control group (p >< 0.01). these findings indicated that adding fma flavour was superior to sb for increasing feed intake of lactating sows and improving growth performance of piglets.>
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