Utilization of low crude protein diets and probiotics to support gut health and function in weaned piglets

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Post-weaning diarrhea in piglets reduces growth performance and therefore causes economic losses in the swine industry. Traditionally, the swine industry has mitigated these losses by utilizing starter diets containing highly digestible and specialized ingredients such as spray dried porcine plasma and sub-therapeutic levels of antibiotics as growth promoters. However, there is intense public pressure to discontinue the use of animal products and antibiotics in pig diets for fear that these products pose a risk to human health. Thus, the swine industry is keenly interested in identifying effective, safe and environmentally friendly nutritional interventions that could replace the use of in-feed antibiotics. Existing evidence suggests that low crude protein-amino acid supplemented diets (LCP-AA) could be used as part of the overall strategy to modulate intestinal development, microbial communities, and immune response in weaned piglets. However, it is critical that such diets are carefully formulated to avoid amino acid deficiencies. Also, there may be synergistic effects between LCP-AA diets and other additives such as probiotics. Therefore, research will be conducted to determine requirements of amino acids that are likely to limit performance of pigs fed LCP-AA diets. The potential for synergistic interactions between LCP-AA and probiotics will be studied with a view of identifying a combination of effective therapies for prevention of piglet diarrhea. Immune challenge models will be used to effectively test the potential of these interventions to support gut health and function in piglets. Results of the project will be useful in developing sustainable nutritional management options for weaned pigs thus helping the Canadian swine industry to adapt to new restrictions regarding in-feed antibiotic usage so as to remain competitive at the international market place.