ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Anim. Sci.
Sec. Animal Nutrition
Volume 6 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fanim.2025.1648283
Novel milk ingredient blend in nursery pig diets did not improve growth performance and survival compared to control diets without or with spray-dried plasma
Provisionally accepted
- 1Department of Research and Development, APC LLC, Ankeny, United States
- 2Department of Animal Science, NC State University, Raleigh, United States
- 3Department of Animal Sciences, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, United States
- 4Research and Development Department, APC LLC, Ankeny, IA, United States
- 5APC LLC, Ankeny, United States
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Three experiments evaluated the effects of a novel milk ingredient blend (FXP) in phases 1 and 2 nursery pig diets on growth performance, diarrhea score, and survival. In experiment 1, pigs were fed a 3-phase nursery regimen, with phases 1, 2, and 3 lasting 10, 11, and 6 days, respectively. Treatments included a control diet in each phase (CONTROL), 4% spray-dried plasma (SDP) in phase 1, followed by the CONTROL diet in phases 2 and 3 (SDP), 0.5% FXP in phases 1 and 2, and the CONTROL diet in phase 3 (FXP). There were 8, 9, and 10 pens fed the CONTROL, SDP, and FXP treatments, respectively. Pigs fed SDP during phase 1 had greater (P < 0.05) average daily gain (ADG), average daily feed intake (ADFI), and average body weight (BW) on day 10 than pigs fed CONTROL or FXP and greater (P < 0.05) gain:feed ratio (G:F) than pigs fed FXP. In experiment 2, the 3-phase nursery feed regimen consisted of diets fed for 11, 10, and 21 days in phases 1 to 3, respectively, using the same treatments as in experiment 1: CONTROL, 4% SDP in phase 1 only, and 1% FXP in phases 1 and 2. Each treatment included 12 pens. Pigs fed SDP in phase 1 had significantly greater (P < 0.05) ADG, ADFI, and BW on day 11 than those fed CONTROL or FXP. Cumulative mortality by day 21 was higher (P < 0.05) for pigs fed FXP compared to CONTROL and SDP, and fecal score was lower (P < 0.05) for SDP compared to CONTROL. In experiment 3, pigs were assigned to either a CONTROL or FXP group, with 0.5% FXP included only in phases 1 and 2. Phases 1 to 3 lasted 11, 12, and 19 days, respectively. Each treatment was assigned to 64 pens of 25-26 pigs per pen. Pigs fed FXP had a higher (P < 0.05) removal rate during phase 3 than the CONTROL. There were no benefits from feeding 0.5% to 1% FXP on pig growth performance, diarrhea incidence, or survival based on the results from these experiments.
Keywords: weaned pigs, Milk protein, Spray-dried plasma, Diarrhea Score, pig survival
Received: 17 Jun 2025; Accepted: 17 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Shen, Kim, Stein, Polo and Crenshaw. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Joe David Crenshaw, Research and Development Department, APC LLC, Ankeny, IA, United States
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