Effect of SQM Iron in nursery pigs
What's the impact under different sanitary conditions and microbial exposure?
By Zhen Cai, Paula Azevedo, Sabreen Berg, Joshua Jendza and Chengbo Yang
Post-weaned piglets are exposed to several stressors such as dietary changes and immunological challenges during the initial weeks. Additionally, separation from the sow and relocation to a new pen introduce social stressors as piglets establish new social hierarchies. As a result, lower feed intake and poorer gut health manifested as post-weaning diarrhea slow down growth and cause economic loss.
Antibiotics were once used as a growth promotor in the pig production; however, more strict regulations have phased out this practice due to concerns of developing drug-resistant superbugs. Many alternatives have been researched. Our study focused on sources of in-feed iron. Iron is an essential mineral for oxygen transport, energy production, and enzymes functions for living organisms. Supplementing nursery pigs support their rapid growth. The issue is that only small amount of the supplemented in-feed iron was absorbed by the pigs and excessive unabsorbed inorganic iron (ie. Ferrous sulfate) that passed down to the gut can cause tissue oxidative stress. Moreover, many pathogenic bacteria showed faster growth to excessive inorganic dietary iron in the gut.
Compared to the inorganic iron sources, organic iron sources, such as polysaccharide iron complexes (PIC), have higher bioavailability and reduced gastrointestinal irritation. SQM® iron (QualiTech Inc, Minnesota), a type of PIC, was suggested to limit iron availability to pathogenic bacteria by restricting bacteria from acquiring iron. Past study on broiler chickens demonstrated improvements in growth performance and reduced disease incidence with dietary SQM iron inclusion. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effects of different iron sources – SQM iron versus ferrous sulfate – on growth performance and gut health among post-weaned piglets. It considered the impact of PIC supplementation on growth performance and gut health in clean vs. dirty sanitation conditions.
What we didPigs were randomly assigned treatment groups on d21 in a 2×2 factorial design of dietary treatment (ferrous sulfate vs. SQM iron) and sanitation conditions (clean vs. dirty) over 28 days. Clean pens were sanitized and disinfected whereas dirty pens were not washed, and we applied feces collected from other sections of Glenlea Swine Barn before we moved the pigs in. We formulated equal inclusion of dietary iron levels between the in-feed iron supplement treatments, which was twice the NRC (2012) requirement. Body weight (BW), feed intake and fecal scores were recorded.
Main findings: Growth performance and fecal scoresSQM iron supplementation led to significantly higher average daily gain (ADG) during the initial two weeks regardless of sanitary conditions (P < 0.05). However, for the latter two weeks, cleaner sanitation condition is the main driver of higher ADG over the pigs raised in dirty conditions. ADFI was also increased in SQM iron supplemented groups in a strong trend (P = 0.06) in the first two weeks and for the overall period (P = 0.09) compared to the ferrous sulfate treatment groups. Feed conversion ratio (FCR) did not differ between the differing iron sources groups, as illustrated in Figure 1.
SQM iron supplementation led to improved fecal scores on day 27 compared to the ferrous sulfate groups; although the improvement was modest, as seen in Figure 2.
ConclusionThe results of this study demonstrate that SQM iron supplementation effectively promotes higher feed intake and average daily gain (ADG) compared to ferrous sulfate during the initial two weeks post-weaning, which makes SQM iron a promising alternative for iron supplementation in nursery production.
Cai is a graduate student in the Livestock Nutritional Biochemisty Laboratory, Azevedo is a research associate and Yang is a professor in the Department of Animal Science, and Berg is an undergraduate swine research technician, all with the University of Manitoba. Jendza is a technical services manager for QualiTech,
