Articles - Nutrition

Not all DF sources are equally suited to influence the provision of energy for the animals.

Water is the most essential nutrient to livestock nutrition and must be considered as much as possible. It should be drinkable, it should not contain harmful substances and should be readily available for the animals concerned.

Arginine and glutamine (members of the arginine family of amino acids) are major building blocks for proteins and essential precursors for synthesis of many substances with enormous biological importance.

In order to apply the most suitable feeding regime to newly weaned pigs it is important to balance the trade off between the detrimental effect on performance of feeding levels of protein that are too low to allow maximal growth and those which increase the risk of post weaning diarrhoea.

Tryptophan has positive effects on voluntary feed intake. This greater feed intake leads to increased growth performance and improved feed conversion ratio in piglets, and to lower body weight losses in sows during lactation.

Low maternal feed levels cause a reduction in muscle fibre numbers, whereas enhanced maternal nutrition resulted in a higher number of muscle fibres in specific muscles.

The AMPs (also called host defence peptides) are small gene encoded peptides of 1 to 5 kDa that have a broad range of activity against gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria, fungi and mycobacteria

A challenge in animal production today is to raise livestock within new environmental rules and regulations. Although most states in the United States regulate swine waste application based on N concentration, more are changing to P-based regulations.

Our research model has been a short chain fructooligosaccharide (scFOS) fed to swine. This compound was selected because it was identified in human and swine milk, was shown to have health benefits in human infants and patients recovering from intestinal anastomosis. The health benefit was believed to occur via the trophic effect of scFOS on the Bifidobacteria population.

Fiber includes a great variety of components with different physicochemical properties that will affect the digestive processes, separately or by combining, in properties such as solubility, viscosity, formation of gels, water retention capacity, bulkiness, endogenous secretions, nutrient absorption, fermentations, intestinal transit, etc.

Due to their multiple effects at a physiologic and cellular level organic acids function as antimicrobials, modifiers of the intestinal flora, pH reducers, stimulants of pancreatic secretion and of the growth of intestinal microvilli, improvers of the gastric and intestinal flora, inhibitors of ammoniac production and of other metabolic depressors of growth, as well as energetic.

The consequences of the inflammatory and immune responses on tryptophan metabolism could impair the availability of tryptophan for body protein accretion, growth and all other metabolic processes involving this amino acid.

Fish meal has always been the main source and the preferred choice of nutritionists for quality protein, above all in the formulation of feed for the youngest ages.

Piglets face a very stressful process at weaning and feed intake becomes one of the most limiting issues.

An understanding of the molecular structure of the whole protein is vital to understanding its digestive behavior and nutritive value in animals. However, studies on protein internal structures at molecular and cellular levels in relation to nutritive value and digestive behaviors of protein in animals are extremely rarely.

Hulls and kernels of Australian sweet lupins are durable and hard to break, which means without reasonable mechanical grinding nutrients in lupins would not be digested and absorbed efficiently.

Dietary fibre (DF) is an important component of all but a few feedstuffs used in the feeding of pigs. It is resistant to digestion by endogenous enzymes in the small intestine thereby becoming the main substrate for bacterial fermentation, particularly in the large intestine.

The sow’s intake is affected by the interaction of different factors, not just nutritional but also those connected with the animal, handling or system of production.

A large body of research data exists on the response of pigs to whey. Good quality whey protein contains all the protective components of milk protein.

The swine production industry has a growing interest in the use of essential oils. Essential oils are products of complex origin. They have antimicrobial and antioxidant effects, they stimulate appetite and intestinal secretions and they are even immunostimulants.

In preliminary studies post-weaning diarrhea-causing E. coli and Salmonella populations were reduced by feeding colicins to weaned pigs.

Practical diet formulation takes into account more than the response of the pig to increasing dietary energy. Available feed ingredients, feed processing capability, and economic value of average daily gain also have an impact on determining the most economical dietary energy level.

Dietary Mg supplementation has been observed to improve pork quality, specifically color and fluid loss.