Bridging the Gap between Reality and Genetic Potential in Pig Performance by the “3F” Nutritional Strategy

Happy Friday everyone!

It has been a busy week for me - I just came back home last night from the American Society of Animal Sciences annual meeting in Austin. This was my second time attending ASAS (the first one was way back in 2012 in hot hot Phoenix)... Because of my poultry background, I don’t usually attend ASAS, so it was really fun to be exposed more to the swine side of the story and also get to see many old friends and meet new ones!

During the meeting, I made a presentation for a handsome swine nutrition professor, Dr. Daiwen Chen (aka my dad😁- this super busy guy could not make it to the meeting, so very conveniently he handed it to me). As a poultry lady, I honestly don't know much about swine production, but preparing this presentation allowed me to learn more about pigs and to get a glimpse of the great potential for the industry in terms of productivity, which makes me once again very excited to be part of this wonderful realm of animal nutrition, and very proud for the work that dad's team has been doing.

With the trend of antibiotic-free production, nutritional strategy will play a vital role in maintaining and improving livestock productivity. As a matter of fact, just a few days ago, on July 9th, China announced the ban of Antibiotics and Growth Promoters in livestock production by end of 2020. So it's going to be an interesting transition in the next few years, and a lot of changes would be expected for our industry in China.

My dad leads the swine nutrition team at the Institute of Animal Nutrition at Sichuan Agricultural University, China, which is one of the top research institutes on animal nutrition in the nation (with 50+ faculty members focusing on nutrition!). Over the past 30+ years, their team has done tremendous work in both applied and basic swine nutrition research, and their research outcomes have contributed significantly to the industry advances across the country.

With the approval of the authors, I'm happy to share the presentation with you all today.

The swine industry globally is gigantic, which requires a lot of resources. Thus it is important for the industry to be efficient both from an economic standpoint and from an environmental standpoint.
A lot of improvements have been seen for the past few decades in terms of swine productivity, yet there is still a gap between where we are now and there the genetic potential allow these animals to be.

The lab's previous work showed that young pigs are truly efficient and have great potential to metabolizing nutrients, but may need to be provided a higher intake level or nutrient level.
Indeed, when feeding pigs 50% higher nutrient level, growth performance significantly improved both for normal birth weight pigs as well as for IUGR pigs, and BW at day 70 can reach 32.5 kg.

Therefore, the authors believe that feed intake and nutritional structure of the feed may be limiting factors for the pigs to fully realize their genetic potential.  

And the "3F" strategy was proposed --- Formulation, Fermentation, and Fluid Feed.

Among them, formulation  (to achieve precision nutrition) is the most difficult F, while implementation would be the biggest challenge for the latter 2 Fs.

Ultimately, their goal is to achieve an FCR as low as 1.45- 1.50 for a 100-117 kg pig!

WOW, that is even better than broilers! If this can really be achieved, that would truly be a revolution for our industry.

Go daddy!

Feel free to drop him a note if you have any questions regarding these experiments or just to connect! The institute is always looking for collaborations domestically and internationally. :)