Before weaning, piglets typically consume highly nutritious, easily digestible mother's milk roughly every hour. This consistent and familiar feeding pattern supports their growth and development. However, after weaning, the sudden transition from milk to solid feed can be a major stressor for young pigs. The abrupt change often leads to a short period of reduced or even complete refusal to eat. After 12 to 24 hours without food, these piglets may overeat when they finally start eating, which can result in digestive issues like diarrhea.
To minimize this risk, it’s essential to design a well-balanced diet that closely resembles the nutritional profile of milk. The form of the feed, feeding frequency, and overall management practices all play a crucial role in helping piglets adapt more smoothly to solid food. A carefully planned nursery nutrition program not only improves feed intake but also reduces the incidence of intestinal diseases, ultimately lowering economic losses for farmers.
The younger the piglets at weaning, the more sensitive they are to dietary changes and management practices. Their digestive system relies heavily on enzymes such as lipases, lactases, and simple proteases, which are present at birth and increase rapidly in the early stages of life. These enzymes are sufficient for digesting milk, but they are not enough for processing solid feed, which requires more complex digestive enzymes like amylase and maltase.
These enzymes are primarily secreted in response to exposure to carbohydrates and other nutrients found in solid feed. Therefore, introducing piglets to feed before weaning—through the use of attractants and familiar flavors—can help stimulate their digestive systems in advance. This early exposure not only makes them more likely to accept solid feed after weaning but also prepares their bodies to process it effectively. As a result, the diet of early-weaned piglets should be formulated to mimic the composition and digestibility of breast milk as closely as possible.
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