Dried chicory root benefits organic piglet growth

Chicory root has many beneficial effects on pigs. It has been shown that the root minimises boar taint and now it also turns out that dried chicory root has a positive effect on piglet growth right after weaning. This has been shown in a series of studies with chicory root carried out by scientists at the Faculty of Agricultural Sciences at the University of Aarhus.

Piglets often succumb to diarrhoea after weaning. Chicory root cannot prevent this, but feeding piglets chicory root can strengthen their health. “We could not prove that chicory root has any effect on the degree of post-weaning diarrhoea, but the improved growth rate and increased concentration of lactic acid in the manure right after weaning indicates that chicory root has an overall beneficial effect on piglet health immediately after weaning at seven weeks of age”, say senior scientist Mette Skou Hedemann and research professor Knud Erik Bach Knudsen, Department of Animal Health, Welfare and Nutrition at the Faculty of Agricultural Sciences.

 

• University of Aarhus

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