• 농업과학연구
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• 제50권3호
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• pp.313-320
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• 2023

A total of 96 weanling pigs with an initial body weight of 5.96 ± 0.08 kg were randomly allocated to two dietary treatments and fed experimental weaning diets for 36 days in three phases; phase 1: day 1 to 7; phase 2: day 8 to 21, and phase 3: day 22 to 36. Treatments consisted of a basal diet (CON) containing 334.0 g/kg dried whey versus a lactic acid (LA) supplemented diet containing 313.6 g/kg dried whey with 10 g/kg LA during phase 1; a CON diet containing 200.0 g/kg dried whey versus an LA diet containing 186.0 g/kg dried whey with 7 g/kg LA during phase 2. During phase 3, both CON and LA groups were fed a diet without dried whey and LA. Pigs fed the LA diet had a higher average daily feed intake ADFI (p = 0.014) and reduced (p = 0.035) gain-feed ratio compared to pigs fed CON diet in phase 2. In phase 3, the average daily gain and feed intake were both increased (p = 0.026 and; p = 0.010, respectively) in the pigs previously fed the LA diet than those fed the CON diet. The apparent total tract digestibility of dry matter and, nitrogen, and the digestible energy were decreased (p < 0.05) in the LA diet group on day 7; however, increased (p < 0.05) digestibility of dry matter and nitrogen and digestible energy was observed at the end of phase 2 and 3. In conclusion, the inclusion of LA was inferred to have improved the average daily gain, feed intake, and nutrient digestibility during the late weanling period of pigs.

• Animal Bioscience
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• 제35권11호
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• pp.1752-1759
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• 2022

Objective: Effects of direct-fed Enterococcus faecium plus bacteriophages (EF-BP) were investigated as potential substitutes for pharmacological ZnO for weanling pigs. Methods: Dietary treatments were supplementations to a basal diet with none (NC), 3,000-ppm ZnO (PC), 1×10¹⁰ colony-forming units of E. faecium plus 1×10⁸ plaque-forming units (PFU) of anti-Salmonella typhimurium bacteriophages (ST) or 1×10⁶ PFU of each of anti-enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli K88 (F4)-, K99 (F5)-, and F18-type bacteriophages (EC) per kg diet. In Exp 1, twenty-eight 21-day-old crossbred weanling pigs were individually fed one of the experimental diets for 14 days and euthanized for histological examination on intestinal mucosal morphology. In Exp 2, 128 crossbred weanling pigs aged 24 days were group-fed the same experimental diets in 16 pens of 8 piglets on a farm with a high incidence of post-weaning diarrhea. Results: None of the diarrheal score or fecal consistency score (FCS), average daily gain (ADG), gain: feed ratio, structural variables of the intestinal villus, and goblet cell density, differed between the EF-BP (ST+EC) and NC groups, between EF-BP and PC, or between ST and EC, with the exception of greater gain: feed for EF-BP than for PC (p<0.05) during days 7 to 14 (Exp 1). In Exp 2, ADG was less for EF-BP vs PC during days 0 to 7 and greater for EF-BP vs NC during days 7 to 14. FCS peaked on day 7 and declined by day 14. Moreover, FCS was less for EF-BP vs NC, did not differ between EF-BP and PC, and tended to be greater for ST vs EC (p = 0.099). Collectively, EF-BP was comparable to or slightly less effective than PC in alleviating diarrhea and growth check of the weanling pigs, with ST almost as effective as PC, when they were group-fed. Conclusion: The E. faecium-bacteriophage recipe, especially E. faecium-anti-S. typhimurium, is promising as a potential substitute for pharmacological ZnO.

• Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences
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• 제19권2호
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• pp.252-261
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• 2006

Four experiments were conducted to investigate the effect of organic or inorganic acid supplementation on the growth performance, nutrient digestibility, intestinal measurements and white blood cell counts of weanling pigs. In growth trial (Exp I), a total of 100 crossbred pigs ({$Landrace{\times}Yorkshire$}${\times}$Duroc), weaned at $23{\pm}2$ days of age and $7.25{\pm}0.10kg$ average initial body weight (BW), were allotted to 5 treatments by body weight and sex in a randomized complete block (RCB) design. Three different organic acids (fumaric [FUA], formic [FOA] or lactic acid [LAA]) and one inorganic acid (hydrochloric acid [SHA]) were supplemented to each treatment diet. Each treatment had 5 replicates with 4 pigs per pen. During 0-3 wk, average daily gain (ADG), average daily feed intake (ADFI) and feed efficiency (G/F ratio) were not significantly different among treatments. However, pigs fed LAA or SHA diet showed improved ADG by 15 or 13% respectively and 12% greater ADFI in both treatments compared to CON diets. Moreover, compared to organic acid treatments, better ADG (p = 0.07) and ADFI (p = 0.09) were observed in SHA diet compared to pigs that were fed the diet containing organic acids (FUA, FOA or LAA). However, during 4-5 wk, no differences in ADG, ADFI and G/F ratio were observed among treatments. Overall, ADG, ADFI and G/F ratio were not affected by acidifier supplementation. Although it showed no significant difference, pigs fed LAA or SHA diets showed numerically higher ADG and ADFI than pigs fed other treatments. In metabolic trial (Exp II), 15 pigs were used to evaluate the effect of acidifier supplementation on nutrient digestibility. The digestibility of dry matter (DM), crude protein (CP), crude fat (CF), crude ash (CA), calcium (Ca) and phosphorus (P) was not improved by acidifier supplementation. Although the amount of fecal-N excretion was not different among treatments, that of urinary-N excretion was reduced in acidsupplemented treatments compared to CON group (p = 0.12). Subsequently, N retention was improved in acid-supplemented groups (p = 0.17). In anatomical trial (Exp III), the pH and $Cl^-$ concentrations of digesta in gastrointestinal (GI) tracts were not affected by acidifier supplementation. No detrimental effect of intestinal and lingual (taste bud) morphology was observed by acidifier supplementation particularly in inorganic acid treatment. In white blood cell assay (Exp IV), 45 pigs were used for measuring white blood cell (WBC) counts. In all pigs after LPS injection, WBC counts had slightly declined at 2 h and kept elevating at 8 h, then returned to baseline by 24 h after injection of lipopolysaccharide (LPS). However, overall WBC counts were not affected by acidifier supplementation. In conclusion, there was no difference between organic and inorganic acidifier supplementation in weanling pigs' diet, however inorganic acidifier might have a beneficial effect on growth performance and N utilization with lower supplementation levels. Furthermore, inorganic acidifier had no negative effect on intestinal measurements and white blood cell counts in weanling pigs. These results suggested that inorganic acidifier might be a good alternative to organic acidifiers in weanling pigs.

• Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences
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• 제13권10호
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• pp.1414-1421
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• 2000

Sixteen specific pathogen free 4-wk-old crossbred weanling pigs were allotted into a $2{\times}2$ factorial experiment to evaluate the effects of chromium (Cr) on the immune responses after lipopolysaccharide (LPS) injection. Two factors included (1) no Cr or 400 ppb Cr supplementation from chromium picolinate (CrPic) and (2) LPS injection ($200{\mu}g/kg$ BW, intraperitoneally) on day 21 (d 21) and 35 (d 35) as compared with saline application. Plasma samples were obtained from all piglets before (0 h) and at 2 h, 4 h, 8 h, and 24 h after LPS injection. The changes in tumor necrosis $factor-{\alpha}$ ($TNF-{\alpha}$) and leukocyte populations after LPS injection were not significant on d 21. On d 35, the plasma $TNF-{\alpha}$ level was increased at h 2 postinjection, and supplemental Cr reduced the $TNF-{\alpha}$ level. The leukocyte populations had changed profoundly and lymphocyte subsets of $CD2^+$ and $CD8^+$ were reduced at 8 h postinjection. The blood granulocytes were increased and the percentage of $CD2^+$ was reduced in the Cr-fed group on d 35. Furthermore, Cr supplementation decreased the blastogensis of concanavalin A-stimulated peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) on d 21. These results suggest that 400 ppb Cr supplementation from CrPic in diets may modulate the immune responses in weanling pigs during LPS injection.

• Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences
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• 제30권1호
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• pp.64-70
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• 2017

Objective: In the present study, role of increasing levels of Ecklonia cava (seaweed) supplementation in diets was investigated on growth performance, coefficient of total tract apparent digestibility (CTTAD) of nutrients, serum immunoglobulins, cecal microflora and intestinal morphology of weanling pigs. Methods: A total of 200 weaned pigs (Landrace${\times}$Yorkshire${\times}$Duroc; initial body weight $7.08{\pm}0.15kg$) were randomly allotted to 4 treatments on the basis of body weight. There were 5 replicate pens in each treatment including 10 pigs of each. Treatments were divided by dietary Ecklonia cava supplementation levels (0%, 0.05%, 0.1%, or 0.15%) in growing-finishing diets. There were 2 diet formulation phases throughout the experiment. The pigs were offered the diets ad libitum for the entire period of experiment in meal form. Results: The pigs fed with increasing dietary concentrations of Ecklonia cava had linear increase (p<0.05) in the overall average daily gain, however, there were no significant differences in gain to feed ratio, CTTAD of dry matter and crude protein at both phase I and phase II. Digestibility of gross energy was linearly improved (p<0.05) in phase II. At day 28, pigs fed Ecklonia cava had greater (linear, p<0.05) Lactobacillus spp., fewer Escherichia coli (E. coli) spp. (linear, p<0.05) and a tendency to have fewer cecal Clostridium spp. (p = 0.077). The total anaerobic bacteria were not affected with supplementation of Ecklonia cava in diets. Polynomial contrasts analysis revealed that villus height of the ileum exhibited a linear increase (p<0.05) in response with the increase in the level of dietary Ecklonia cava. However, villus height of duodenum and jejunum, crypt depth, villus height to crypt depth ratio of different segments of the intestine were not affected. Conclusion: The results suggest that Ecklonia cava had beneficial effects on the growth performance, cecal microflora, and intestinal morphology of weanling pigs.

• Journal of Animal Science and Technology
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• 제63권6호
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• pp.1453-1463
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• 2021

Feeding is the most important behavior that represents the health and welfare of weanling pigs. The early detection of feed refusal is crucial for the control of disease in the initial stages and the detection of empty feeders for adding feed in a timely manner. This paper proposes a real-time technique for the detection and recognition of small pigs using a deep-leaning-based method. The proposed model focuses on detecting pigs on a feeder in a feeding position. Conventional methods detect pigs and then classify them into different behavior gestures. In contrast, in the proposed method, these two tasks are combined into a single process to detect only feeding behavior to increase the speed of detection. Considering the significant differences between pig behaviors at different sizes, adaptive adjustments are introduced into a you-only-look-once (YOLO) model, including an angle optimization strategy between the head and body for detecting a head in a feeder. According to experimental results, this method can detect the feeding behavior of pigs and screen non-feeding positions with 95.66%, 94.22%, and 96.56% average precision (AP) at an intersection over union (IoU) threshold of 0.5 for YOLOv3, YOLOv4, and an additional layer and with the proposed activation function, respectively. Drinking behavior was detected with 86.86%, 89.16%, and 86.41% AP at a 0.5 IoU threshold for YOLOv3, YOLOv4, and the proposed activation function, respectively. In terms of detection and classification, the results of our study demonstrate that the proposed method yields higher precision and recall compared to conventional methods.

• Journal of Animal Science and Technology
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• 제51권6호
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• pp.503-510
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• 2009

This study investigated the effects of tannic acid (TA) in the diets for weanling pigs prepared with/without supplemental Fe on performance, hematology, fecal microflora and diarrhea incidence. Limestone and calcium phosphate used in Experiment 1 and 2 were of semi-synthetic and feed-grade quality, respectively; while the trace-mineral premix used in both the experiments was prepared without any added Fe source. In Experiment 1, 108 weaned pigs (Landrace ${\times}$ Yorkshire ${\times}$ Duroc, initially 6.46 ${\pm}$ 1.04 kg BW) were allotted to 3 treatments including control (diet added with $FeSO_4$ and antibiotic), T1 (diet devoid of $FeSO_4$ and antibiotic) and T2 (T1 diet added with 125 mg/kg TA). Each treatment had 4 replicates with 9 pigs in each pen. Feeding of T1 diet had a negative effect on the performance and plasma Fe status of pigs, while addition of TA to T1 diet resulted in performance of pigs comparable to pigs fed the control diet, reduced diarrhea incidence but had a negative influence on the hematological and plasma Fe indices. Additionally, pigs fed T2 diet had fewer (p<0.05) total anaerobic bacteria, Clostridium spp. and coliforms than pigs fed T1 diet, and greater number of Bifidobacterium spp. and Lactobacillus spp. in feces when compared with pigs fed control and T1 diets. In Experiment 2, 144 weaned pigs (Landrace ${\times}$ Yorkshire ${\times}$ Duroc, initially 6.00 ${\pm}$ 1.07 kg BW) were allotted to 4 dietary treatments including control (diet added with $FeSO_4$ and antibiotic) and diets devoid of supplemental Fe added with antibiotic (An), TA and both (AnTA). Each treatment had 4 replicates with 9 pigs in each pen. Addition of An, TA or both to diets devoid of supplemental Fe did not have any effect on performance, blood hematology and plasma Fe but resulted in reduced (p<0.05) diarrhea incidence and lower (p<0.05) fecal coliform population than pigs fed the control diet. These results suggest that TA has a negative influence on blood hematology and plasma Fe status when diets are inadequate in Fe; however, TA reduced diarrhea incidence and might have antimicrobial activity.

• Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences
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• 제11권2호
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• pp.201-207
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• 1998

One growth trial and one digestibility trial were conducted to evaluate the nutritional value of HP300, a commercially processed soybean meal product for weanling pigs. Dried whey, fish meal and/or full fat extruded soybeans (FFES) as well as portions of soybean meal (SBM) were replaced with HP300 in weanling pig diets. The objectives were to investigate the effects of HP300 on growth performance, digestibility, ileal amino acid digestibility and blood amino acid concentration in weanling pigs. One hundred and twenty crossbred $(Duroc{\times}Beijing\;Black{\times}Landrace)$ pigs weaned at 28 days of age were used in the growth trial. The pigs were randomly allocated to five treatments, with three pens per treatment and eight pigs per pen. The trial duration was 28 days. The control (CTRL) diet contained no HP300; in treatments 2, 3 and 4, dried whey and fish meal were replaced by 3.0%, 7.5% and 10.5% HP300; in treatment 5, full fat extruded soybeans were replaced by 10.5% HP300 plus soybean oil to attain the same metabolic energy content as FFES. Five T-cannulated barrows were used in a digestibility trial with a $5{\times}5$ Latin square design to determine nitrogen retention and amino acid ileal digestibility of HP300 used alone or mixed with other ingredients. The results indicated that replacement of dried whey, fish meal, full fat extruded soybeans and a part of the soybean meal with HP300 in piglet diets improved average daily gain and feed conversion ratio (p < 0.05). There was a trend toward improved DM, crude protein and amino acid ileal digestibilities and improved protein and amino acid ileal digestibilities and improved protein net availability with the use of HP300 in swine diets.

• Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences
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• 제23권8호
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• pp.1057-1065
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• 2010

Two experiments were conducted to compare the effects of feeding a newly-developed rare earth mineral-yeast product, zinc oxide (ZnO) or antibiotics on the performance, nutrient digestibility and serum parameters of weanling pigs. In experiment 1, 150 crossbred barrows (24 d old and 6.28 kg BW) were fed one of five dietary treatments consisting of an unsupplemented basal diet or the basal diet supplemented with antibiotics (33 ppm tiamulin and 100 ppm chlortetracycline), ZnO (1,500 or 2,500 ppm) or 0.1% peptide-bound rare earth mineral-yeast. In experiment 2, 576 crossbred barrows (28 d old and 7.20 kg BW) were fed the same diets as those used in experiment 1 modified only by the addition of 1.0% Celite 545 to all diets as a digestibility marker. However, the negative control was not included. In experiment 1, weight gain was significantly lower (p<0.05) for pigs fed the negative control than for pigs fed diets supplemented with antibiotics, ZnO, or rare earth mineral-yeast. Pig performance did not differ between pigs fed the four supplemented diets. In experiment 2, there were no differences in performance between pigs fed diets supplemented with antibiotic, ZnO or rare earth mineral-yeast. The digestibility of dry matter, crude protein, calcium, phosphorus and energy were significantly (p<0.01) higher on the rare earth mineral-yeast diet than on diets supplemented with ZnO. In addition, pigs fed the diet supplemented with rare earth mineral-yeast had significantly (p<0.05) higher digestibility of histidine, lysine, threonine and valine than pigs fed the ZnO supplemented diets. Digestibility coefficients for pigs fed antibiotics tended to be intermediate to those of pigs fed rare earth mineralyeast or ZnO. In conclusion, the performance of pigs fed rare earth mineral-yeast was basically equal to that of pigs fed antibiotics or ZnO indicating that rare earth mineral-yeast can be successfully used as a growth promoter in diets fed to nursery pigs. The effects of rare earth mineral-yeast appeared to be mediated through improvements in nutrient digestibility.

• Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences
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• 제23권11호
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• pp.1496-1502
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• 2010

Two experiments were conducted to evaluate the effects of diet complexity and fermented soy protein on growth performance and amino acid digestibility. In Exp. 1, a total of 120 crossbred weanling pigs ($5.68{\pm}0.80\;kg$ BW) were randomly allocated into 4 treatments. Each treatment had 6 replicate pens comprising 5 pigs in each replicate. Experimental diets consisted of simple (soybean meal as protein source) and complex (soybean meal, rice protein concentrate, potato protein concentrate and fish meal as protein sources) diets; each diet contained 0 or 5% fermented soy protein (FSP), respectively. Dietary treatments included: i) simple diet; ii) simple diet with 5% FSP; iii) complex diet; iv) complex diet with 5% FSP. Pigs were provided each experimental diet for 20 d (phase 1) and then fed the same common diet for 10 d (phase 2). During days 0-10, pigs fed FSP diets had greater ADG than those fed non-FSP diets (p<0.05). G/F in FSP treatments was significantly higher than that in non-FSP treatments (p<0.05) from days 0 to 10. Throughout the overall period, G/F was greater in FSP treatments compared with non-FSP treatments (p<0.05). On d 10, N digestibility was higher in pigs fed FSP diets than in those fed non-FSP diets (p<0.05). Diet complexity did not affect growth performance and nutrient digestibility (p>0.05) in this experiment. In Exp 2, 12 ileal-cannulated, weanling barrows were housed in individual metabolism crates and randomly assigned to 1 of 4 treatments (same as Exp. 1) by using a $4{\times}4$ Latin square design. Among the essential amino acids, apparent ileal digestibility (AID) of Met and Val were increased in pigs fed FSP diets compared with those fed non-FSP diets (p<0.05). AID of Met, Phe and total essential amino acids were higher in pigs fed complex diets than in those fed simple diets (p<0.05). Among the non-essential amino acids, AID of Ala in FSP treatments was greater than that in non-FSP treatments (p<0.05). In addition, Asp, Cys, Glu, Pro, Ser and total non-essential amino acid digestibilities in pigs fed complex diets were higher compared with those fed simple diets (p<0.05). Interaction was observed in AID of Met, Asp and Pro. In conclusion, these results indicated that feeding of 5% FSP to nursery pigs improved feed efficiency and AID of amino acids, and diet complexity did not maximize the growth performance of pigs in the subsequent phase.