Browsing by Author "Virtanen, Venla"

The feeding of sows is restricted during late gestation that they would not be overweight when they are farrowing. Overweight of sows during farrowing can be fatal to piglets and make farrowing more difficult. Restricted feeding causes hunger and stress to sows. High-fiber feed has many positive effects. High-fiber feed offers an opportunity to chew, promotes bowel functions, keeps sows full longer and reduce stereotypical behaviour. Luonnonvarakeskus and A-Tuottajat organised feeding-experiment where the effect of two diets with different fibre content were compared on production resultst. It was studied how the diets effected on production results like sows feeding amounts, weights, constipations and the number and weights of born piglets. Our hyphotesis was that sows who ate high-fiber feed would eat more, their bowel would work better and their piglets would grow more. There were 80 sows who were divided into two groups in pairs. The pairs were as similar as possible. The pairs were placed in the farrowing ward. Group differences were analysed by analysis of variance with SAS. The test feed contained more fiber than the control feed. The test feed had crude fiber 138g/kg DM when the control feed had crude fiber 94g/kg DM. The test feed had NDF-fiber 305g/kg DM and ADF-fiber 124g/kg DM. The control feed had NDF-fiber 153g/kg DM and ADF-fiber 71g/kg DM. The test feed had more both soluble and insoluble fiber than the control feed. The amino acid composition and energy content did not differ between feeds. The results of 75 sows were analysed. No significant differences were found between treatments in the feeding test. The test group who ate the high-fiber diet did not have constipation after 5 days of farrowing unlike some of the control group sows. All the sows lost significantly weight during lactation. Piglets in both groups were even size ang grew steady. There was a great deal of dispersion in the results and the amount of data was too small to find differences. It is possible that differences between diets were too small. It is possible that larger data and more divergent feeds could have led to large differences.