Enhancing piglet diets with nutrient analytics
At weaning, piglets are still developing. As a result, their stomachs are on their way to becoming mature. Sometimes, however, digesting feed ingredients around weaning might therefore be a problem. In those moments, they can do with a little help, by providing the animals with nutrition that feel like a walk in the park for any pig stomach.
The piglet’s gastro-intestinal tract contains various first-line-of-defence mechanisms (taste and olfaction, stomach acidification, the mucosal barrier and gut integrity) that help protect piglet health. However, around weaning, those functions can become overwhelmed or suppressed. Typically, around weaning, piglets struggle to maintain a low stomach pH. The stomach pH can rise to a level that is more hospitable to pathogens, compromising digestive capacity and leading to suboptimal protein digestion and an increase in diarrhoea. All of those concerns can compromise piglet health, reduce uniformity and harm the producer’s bottom line.
Formulating the post-weaning diet with the intention of supporting a low stomach pH can help strengthen piglets’ natural immune and digestive functions to offset these health risks. This article focuses on the specific benefits of nutritional solutions and formulations that seek to support low gut pH to maintain high-quality, natural barriers and improve digestive efficiency.
The ABCs of a lower pH
Piglets weaned around 3 to 4 weeks have an underdeveloped capacity for the production of gastric acid, which contains hydrochloric acid (HCl). That situation causes stomach pH to be around 5-6 – from its optimal level (3 or lower). In those conditions key pathogenic bacteria can survive, including E. coli, Salmonella and Clostridium. One way the pH levels can be managed is by reducing the need for gastric acid. This is where the acid-binding capacity (ABC) of feed ingredients plays an important role. The “ABC-4 value” helps understand how much stomach acid an ingredient binds before its pH approaches 4.
As producers and nutritionists know, it can be a complex task to formulate a piglet diet to help maintaining stomach pH at an optimal level. Various protein sources and minerals are well-known buffering components, and the ABC-4 values of many other ingredients can be found in literature. However, not all ingredients have reported values in the literature and, because laboratory and analytical methodology may differ between sources, significant errors in calculating ABC-4 of total diet components are not uncommon.
To address that, Trouw Nutrition developed a standard laboratory assay leading to a full and robust analytical database for ABC-4 values of numerous ingredients based on a high number of samples. This knowledge is used to formulate low ABC-4 feeds as part of the Milkiwean Vital Start programme, which helps strengthen the natural immune and digestive functions in young pigs, even animals in a challenged environment.
Studying low ABC-4 diets in piglets
The company’s researchers recently studied how the buffering capacity of the feed supports piglets around weaning, particularly in challenging conditions. In the study, piglets were fed a diet with a low ABC-4, reflective of feeds formulated for the Milkiwean Vital Start programme.
This study evaluated performance when piglets were fed diets ranging from low to high ABC-4 in the first two weeks post-weaning.
The study included 240 weaned piglets (24 days of age, 5.8 kg weaning weight) and was conducted at the company’s own Swine Research Centre in the Netherlands, using a suboptimal management model. In this model, the room temperature was 2 °C below optimal and floor slats were partially covered, allowing organic matter high in microbial load to build up in the pen. Additionally, 1.5 kg of manure was placed on the floor of every pen four times during the first 15 days of the trial.
Lower ABC-4, higher performance
Piglets fed a low ABC-4 diet had the highest body weight at the end of the trial (+0.5-1.1 kg, P<0.05). The low ABC-4 diet also improved ADG and ADFI in the first 2 weeks post-weaning and during the complete nursery period. The effect on feed efficiency was neutral, see Figures 1 and 2. Faecal scoring was done weekly using a 5-point scale:
- 0 = normally shaped faeces;
- 1 = shapeless faeces;
- 2 = thick, liquid faeces (diarrhoea);
- 3 = thin, liquid faeces (watery diarrhoea); and
- 9 = no scoring possible.
A low ABC-4 diet resulted in a lower diarrhoea incidence, especially in the first 2 weeks post-weaning (Figure 3). The study results indicate that a low ABC-4 diet improved gut health, feed intake and performance, even in suboptimal management conditions. Findings demonstrate the value of low ABC-4 feed formulations, and the importance of having precise values when developing a low ABC-4 diet.
With the Milkiwean Vital Start programme having access to an accurate matrix database that documents ABC-4 values, formulators are able to design diets that have a low ABC-4 and are least-cost formulations. This approach to develop post-weaning diets can produce optimum results for piglets and producers.
