Vet World Vol.13 July-2020 Article-1
Research Article
Veterinary World, 13(7): 1245-1250
https://doi.org/10.14202/vetworld.2020.1245-1250
Effect of soybean expeller supplementation during the final phase of sow gestation on litter birth weight
2. IRTA, Centre de Recerca en Sanitat Animal (CReSA, IRTA-UAB), Campus de la Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain.
3. The OIE Collaborating Centre for the Research and Control of Emerging and Re-emerging Diseases in Europe (IRTA-CReSA), Barcelona, Spain.
4. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET), Córdoba, Argentina.
Background and Aim: Nutrition plays a key role in the production of pigs, especially in pregnant sows, where modifications in nutritional requirements can affect their productive performance. The aim of this study was to evaluate nutritional supplementation with soybean expeller in sows during the last third of the gestation period and its effect on litter birth weight.
Materials and Methods: A quasi-experimental study was conducted on a farrow-to-finish farm, where 192 sows were equally assigned to treatment and control groups. Several variables were recorded at both the sow and piglet level. The treatment group consisted of piglets from 95 sows supplemented with soybean expeller during the final phase of gestation (20 days), and the comparison group consisted of piglets from 97 sows fed only with a commercial balanced ration (control group).
Results: Soybean expeller supplementation increased individual piglet weight by 190-270 g, and the increased number of live piglets could decrease the weight of each piglet. Moreover, the number of piglets weighing <900 g decreased by 10% as compared to the control group, indicating that supplementation could improve pre-weaning mortality.
Conclusion: Our results suggest that soybean expeller supplementation in sows during the last third of the gestation period could improve production performance, especially on organic farms. Keywords: organic farms, piglet weight, production performance, sow nutrition.
Keywords: organic farms, piglet weight, production performance, sow nutrition.
How to cite this article: Masi Mignaco S, Alba-Casals A, Carranza A, Parada J (2020) Effect of soybean expeller supplementation during the final phase of sow gestation on litter birth weight, Veterinary World, 13(7): 1245-1250.
Received: 22-11-2019 Accepted: 11-05-2020 Published online: 02-07-2020
Corresponding author: Julián Parada E-mail: jparada@ayv.unrc.edu.ar
DOI: 10.14202/vetworld.2020.1245-1250
Copyright: Masi Mignaco, et al. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http:// creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.