Abstracts - Nutrition

Feeding conjugated linoleic acid up to 1.0% to growing-finishing pigs does not significantly alter either immune system (innate or cell-mediated) or blood chemistry variables.

The fermented garlic powder supplementation added at the level of 2 g/kg can improve growth performance, while improving meat marbling and firmness score.

Supplementing diets with 250 mg/kg copper stimulates feed intake and results in an enhancement in weanling pigs’ growth.

Light weight pigs were found to eat more and grow faster per kg of body weight than medium or heavy weight pigs.

Offering a purified source of β-glucans resulted in beneficial reductions in odorous volatile fatty acids in the distal gastrointestinal tract and in excreted manure, and may reflect improvements in N digestibility.

Osteochondrosis prevalence can be reduced by applying deep litter floors with extra space allowance and/or restricted feeding in fattening pigs.

Supplementing sow diets with 250 mg/kg of oregano essential oils during gestation and lactation did not affect the growth potential of and immune responses in suckling piglets.

Sows and piglets diets supplemented with probiotics are effective in maintaining animal performance and control of diarrhea during the nursery phase.

Partial enteral feeding increases superior mesenteric artery blood flow in the neonatal pig compared with total parenteral nutrition.

Feeding co-extruded flaxseed to increase omega-3 fatty acid content in trimmed loin muscle did not result in levels sufficient to meet label requirements and had limited effects on palatability.

The concentration of fatty acids in subcutaneous fat and liver tissues of piglets 35 d after weaning is largely dependent on the CLA content of piglet diet rather than CLA enrichment of sow diet.

Using ileal digestibility values determined in growing pigs to formulate sow diets may lead to overfeeding of sows with protein and can negatively affect overall production efficiency through increased cost and excess nitrogen excretion.

Modifying feed intake during growth may change pork nutritional value and tenderness.

An enhanced feed and water intake during lactation may increase weaning weight of piglets and decreases relative body weight loss of sows.

Metabolite combinations produced by L. plantarum strains are potential alternatives to antibiotics that could be used as growth promoter in postweaning piglets.

Different probiotic complexes of lactic acid bacteria improved growth performance and feed conversion in the first two weeks post-weaning, but the gut environment was improved in all period.

Dietary conjugated linoleic acid increases intramuscular fat content in finishing pigs.

Gestation diets containing protein at 50 and 250% of recommendations led to marked changes in protein and fat metabolism in gilts resulting in fetal growth retardation of 15%.

Restricting energy during the gilt development slightly delays the mean age at puberty.

8% crude glycerol can be added to the diet and used as an effective alternative energy source to partially replace corn.

Barley-based diets have more beneficial effects on gut health, oat-based diets have higher potential to enhance beneficial microbial populations and endogenous β-glucans show better prebiotic properties.

Feeding a single amount of amino acids (AA) throughout gestation results in overfeeding AA in early gestation and underfeeding AA in late gestation.

The expression of Sepw1 gene is associated with the enhanced water-holding capacity of meat.

Diet and ingredient switching does not affect pig performance during the finishing period.