Nutritional Strategies for Swine in Nursery Phase
Lactose, L-glutamine, L-glutamic acid, Nutritional Additives, Food Conversion.
The nursery phase, which happens after weaning, is a critical point in pig husbandry, since weaning causes a lot of stress in the animal due to separation of the matrix, alteration of the diet and mixture of litters, which can lead to losses. Two experiments were carried out with the objective of evaluating the dietary supplementation of L-glutamine e L-acid glutamic (Exp.1), because they are directly linked to the integrity of the intestinal mucosa, and to analyze concentrations of whey on the zootechnical indexes (Exp.2). In Exp.1 560 weaning phase piglets were weaned at 21 ± 1 d. The animals were distributed in 28 bays with homogeneous weights and separated according to sex. Supplemental nutritional supplement was included of L-glutamine e L-acid glutamic (AminoGut, Ajinomoto®, Japan) inclusion of 0%, 0,4%, 0,8% e 1,2%. Weekly weighing of the stalls were carried out and the weekly consumption per bay of the entrance of the nursery was measured until 28 d. The indices evaluated were: average weight gain (AWG), daily average gain (DAG), and feed conversion (FC). In Exp.2, 560 nursery phase piglets were weaned at 21 ± 1 d. The animals were distributed in 28 bays with homogeneous weights in mixed bays. The treatments with the inclusion of whey occurred in two phases: First: Diet I 12%, Diet II 14%, Diet III 16% and Diet IV 18% and Second: Diet I 3%, Diet II 5%, Diet III 7% and Diet IV 9%, respectively. Weekly weighings of the bays were measured and the weekly consumption per bay was measured. The zootechnical indexes analyzed were AWG, DAG and FC. In Exp 1 no differences (P> 0.05) were observed for any AminoGut treatment. The mean performance for CA was (1.6383 ± 0.0197). No Exp2. (1.52 ± 0.02) and Diet IV (1.54 ± 0.04) were better (P = 0.0129) than Diet III (1.67 ± 0.04), but did not differ from Diet l (1.61 ± 0.03). The inclusion of L-glutamine and L-glutamic acid did not provide improvement in performance whereas the data suggest that Diet I seems to be the most suitable for the day-care phase as regards serum levels of whey.