Effect of sugar beet pulp and L-carnitine in gilt gestation diets on gilt weight and lactation feedintake and progeny growth

摘要

Advances in genetic selection for increased sow prolificacy has resulted in a reduction in piglet birthweightand increased piglet mortality. Therefore, strategies to increase piglet weight and robustness at birth are of increasingimportance. Gilts tend to give birth to lighter piglets and their progeny have lower pre-weaning growth rates than pigletsfrom multiparous sows (Carney-Hinkle et al. 2013). Previous research found that supplementing gestating sows with Lcarnitine(L-car) increased piglet birthweight and lifetime growth (Birkenfeld et al. 2006 and Ramanau et al. 2008);however there is little information regarding L-car supplementation to gilts. Furthermore, due to a lower gut capacity ingilts, lactation feed intakes are low relative to that of multiparous sows. Increasing fibre level with sugar beet pulp (SBP)during gestation may increase gut capacity at parturition, thereby facilitating higher voluntary feed intake during lactation.It was hypothesised that L-car combined with a high SBP diet could benefit piglets in gilt litters by increasing birthweightand consequently improve lifetime piglet growth. Furthermore, feeding high levels of SBP in the diet will increase lactationfeed intake. To test this hypothesis, we conducted a 2 x 2 factorial experiment with two factors for fibre (0% SBP and 40%SBP) and two factors for L-car (0g/day and 0.125g/day).