Feeding Sows Lucerne, or Diets with Similar Energy and Nutritional Profiles to Lucerne, Improves the Pre-Weaning Performance of Piglets

Feeding fibre and branched-chain amino acids (BCAA) to sows during late gestation lactation, respectively, have been shown improve litter weights at weaning. Therefore, supplementing primiparous sow diets with lucerne chaff, a feedstuff high in fibre, BCAA tryptophan, may the performance of their progeny. Experiment 1 investigated effects feeding (n = 118) either (i) control diet (CON); (ii) CON kg chaff (LUC); or (iii) formulated similar digestible energy content as + LUC (SIMLUC 1) until farrowing. The SIMLUC improved day 21 weight (p 0.055). In 2 111) multiparous (parities 2–5, n 112) were fed 2) from 110 farrowing (PreF), 10 post-farrowing (PreF PostF). tended be more beneficial compared when PreF, indicated by an interaction between parity on average piglet 0.078). Overall, is most effective improving progeny evidenced D21 weights.