Abrupt weaning at a relatively young age is challenging because the piglet's gut is not well developed to change from highly digestible sow milk to a dry piglet feed based on plant proteins, starch, and complex carbohydrates. Furthermore, the additional stress of removing the piglet from its mother and mixing it with other piglets from different litters increases the risk for gut disorders. In the past, bacterial dysbiosis could be controlled with in-feed or therapeutic antibiotics or pharmaceutical levels of ZnO, but current regulation bans this. Therefore other management and nutritional measures are needed to ease the weaning process. These include increasing piglet vitality from birth and the sow's milk production to improve weaning weight.
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