The pressure to cut costs due to rising feed prices is undeniable these days. But experts say it’s important to resist the urge to abruptly switch from sow milk to simple feed ingredients in an effort to save a few dollars.
The result could be health challenges that outweigh any potential savings. Nursery pigs need time to adjust to new diets.
“Transitioning the weaned pig is the most critical step. We have to work with the pig and recognize what physically the animal is able to digest and absorb and not rush the process,” says Laura Greiner, assistant professor of animal science at Iowa State University.
Complexity beats simplicity when it comes to young pigs, says Emily Otto-Tice, a nutritionist with Purina Swine Technical Solutions.
“Complex diets are easy to digest and support a gradual transition from liquid milk to dry ingredients,” Otto-Tice explains. “When ingredients are easy to digest, pigs adjust more smoothly to eating from a feeder rather than nursing on the sow. Complex diets also support the development of the enzymes needed to better digest plant proteins and carbohydrates.”
Although complex ingredients can have higher up-front costs, Otto-Tice says these ingredients are processed to provide higher nutrient quality and improved nutrient availability to the young pig. Therefore, they can pay off in improved feed intake and pig health in the nursery and beyond.
Step Down in Complexity
After a pig is weaned, Otto-Tice recommends feeding a series of diets based on the pig’s age and nutritional needs, starting with highly complex diets and stepping down in complexity – and ingredient costs – as pigs grow.
“The baby pig is producing different enzymes in their gut compared to older pigs that don’t work for corn/soybean meal diets. For example, baby pigs produce a large amount of lactase and not a lot of amylase, sucrase and protease,” Greiner explains. “This means they can break down sugars like lactose, but not grain proteins and complex carbohydrates. So, we have to carefully formulate diets that line up with what their body is producing for enzymes to break down the feed we give them into nutrients that their bodies can use.”
In addition, when a baby pig is weaned, their intestines change and lose some of its ability to absorb nutrients and actually opens up, which can increase the potential for disease, Greiner says.
“This will take a few weeks to repair and recover from, so we are careful to create a diet that provides the right nutrients to aid in recovery and focus on gut health,” she says.
The challenges of precise phase feeding include multiple diet transitions and more complicated feed-handling logistics.
“A newly weaned pig might look like it’s ready to transition to a phase 2 diet after eating only 3 pounds of phase 1,” Otto-Tice says. “But, if that phase 1 diet is formulated for 6 pounds or more intake, it will be too early for the pig. On the inside, its gut is not mature enough to fully handle the reduced complexity of the ingredients.”
Transition Slowly
When transitioning pigs from one diet to the next, Greiner encourages producers to be careful not to make too dramatic of a shift. Transitioning a pig too quickly could cause bacterial issues in the gut which can cause disease or even mortality.
“We try to reduce items like lactose over a 3-week timeframe, so the pig’s system becomes adjusted to more soybean meal, etc. The same holds true with a by-product such as DDGS. We generally bring it up slowly as the diet palatability can change and cause the pigs not to eat for a few days. Any time a pig doesn’t eat, we increase the chance for ulcers, hemorrhagic bowel and lost gain,” Greiner says.
Some producers prefer a reduced number of phases in their nursery or starter programs for convenience and labor efficiency, Otto-Tice says.
For example, a producer could feed an alternative diet that is still complex but has a slightly lower plane of nutrition. This alternative diet meets the needs of traditional phase 1 and phase 2 nursery feeding programs and is fed for the first 7 to 10 days post weaning. Extending the phases allows producers to manage costs while ensuring all pigs get access to enough phase 1 feed and have smooth transitions to gut maturity.
“Pigs might not get the optimal starts in the first week they would from a more complex phase one diet,” Otto-Tice says. “But, this feeding strategy approach still supports the transition from sow milk to dry feed and is much smoother than an abrupt switch from milk to grains and other protein sources. An extended phase 1 also provides the correct nutrition for gut development and allows more time for the gut to mature and develop the proper enzymes to digest plant ingredients.”
End-of-Nursery Weights Predict Performance
Each performance phase impacts the next, and end-of-nursery weights are the strongest predictor of finishing weights.
“If we think about transitioning from developmental phase, we know that they build upon each other,” Greiner says. “We used to say that a half of a pound increase in weaned pig weight resulted in two pounds increase out of the nursery and that was four extra pounds at market. There are newer studies that suggest that that number is no longer that large, but again, we all recognize that a bigger pig at each of those phases means that the pig is growing well and will go to market sooner.”
Support optimal pig performance in the grower and finisher phases by choosing ingredients to ease the weaned pig’s transition from sow milk to dry feed.
“Each operation is different, and individuals need to decide based on their unique goals whether it makes sense to feed multiple nursery diets with complex ingredients or utilize diets with a little less complexity that maintain a high degree of digestibility and palatability and require fewer phases,” Otto-Tice says.
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