Grass hay mixed-in creep feed or separately-fed differentially affects digestive development in pre- and post-weaning piglets
In conclusion, feeding a structured and fibre-rich diet to suckling piglets enhance their digestive tract development and adapt their microbiome to fibre digestion in later life. Maintaining a fibre-rich diet from suckling to nursery is recommended, though this come with a transient reduction in weight gain caused by lower feed intake that, however, can be recovered afterwards accompanied with an optimized energy conversion ratio.
Authors
- Geert Janssens (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5191-3657)
- H.M.J. van Hees (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1457-1731)
- An Cools (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0009-2426-2906)
- Dominiek Maes (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1149-9348)
- Renjie Yao (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9330-2857)
- T. Hulshof (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2020-4281)
- Mattijs Merckx
Institutions
- Ghent University (BE)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Journal of Animal Science and Biotechnology/Journal of animal science and biotechnology
- Published
- 2025-07-01
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1186/s40104-025-01227-4
- Citations
- 1
- Primary Topic
- Animal Nutrition and Physiology
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 1.19