Influence of feed flavour on pre-weaning pig performance

摘要

A flavour is the sensory impression of a food or other substance, and is determined mainly by the senses of taste and smell. Feed flavours are commonly used in swine nursery diets to improve diet payability and stimulate intake. However, evidence of the potential effects of adding flavours to creep feed on pre-weaning feed intake and performance is quite limited. Historically, early research examining creep feeding used feed disappearance for the entire litter to determine if the creep feed was beingconsumed. This could be misleading as it assumes that all piglets in a litter consumed the creep feed. Recent creep feed studies, using colour markers in the feed, have shown that only a certain proportion of piglets actually consume creep feed. These "eaters" as a result have better initial post weaning feed intake and growth performance than those in the litter that do not consume creep feed. Subsequently, researchers have tried to identify factors that increase the proportion of eaters within a litter to improve overall nursery performance. One key dietary factor may be how the creep feed smells. It is also thought that exposure to the flavour in the pre-weaning period may also improve post-weaning performance when the same flavour is added to thenursery diets.