Producing more robust piglets for modern farming systems

Welfare concerns of meat consumers is leading to several changes in swine farms as banning castration without anesthesia, tail docking and reducing piglet mortality.

At the same time, pig genetic companies have improved sow prolificacy leading to lower  piglet birth weights and reduced colostrum quantity available for each piglet.

With the evolution of societal expectations and the need for profitability at the farm level, piglets need to be more robust.

Impacting litter health through sow nutrition.

The new approach in piglet nutrition focuses the sow’s diet and how it can affect the piglet’s robustness and performance.

Before farrowing, the sow’s diet impacts the health status: microbiota, oxidative status and immunity. 

Colostrum transfers energy and passive immunity, to piglets, which are essential for developing its active immunity and survival, among others. Indeed, with more prolificacy, there is more competition to access teats leading to less individual colostrum intake. Yet, as shown on the graphic below, colostrum is essential for survival (Gourley et al., 2020) as most of the dead piglets are the ones which consumed less than 300 g of colostrum, whatever the piglet/functional teat ratio.

Figure from Gourley et al., 2020: Correlation between pig to teat ratio and colostrum intake, in relation to survival at weaning. The higher the pig to teat ratio, the less the colostrum intake by the piglet. Dark points represent dead piglets before weaning and clear points represent live piglets at weaning.

Reinforcing colostrum immunity to improve piglet robustness. 

By supporting the immune defense of sows in colostrum and milk production, TECHNA proposes a combination of plant extracts and aromatic compounds contributing to improved of growth performance and supporting the immune system of piglets.

IMUN’UP strengthens passive immunity transfer from the sows and enhances active immunity of piglets to improve survival rates and litter weaning weights. In several trials conducted in Europe and Asia, IMUN’UP increased (by 15%) the immunoglobulins concentration in colostrum, colostrum BRIX value and also the average daily gain of piglets (by 6%) during the post- weaning phase.

In  recent field trials, results have also shown that in farm production, the supplementation can improve the average weight of the piglet at weaning and at the end of the nursery phase, whilst also decreasing the risk of diarrhea in piglets. By using IMUN’UP, sows reduce their inflammatory status and transmit a better health status to their progeny, ultimately fulfill the consumers’ expectations and the farmers’ profitability.