Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
16. Feeding various fat sources to sows: effects on
immune status and performance of sows and
piglets
V. Bontempo
*
and X.R. Jiang
Department of Health, Animal Science and Food Safety, Università degli Studi di Milano,
via Celoria 10, 20133 Milan, Italy;
valentino.bontempo@unimi.it
Abstract
Foetal energy demands are greatly increased during late gestation and catabolism of
maternal reserves occurs if dietary energy supply is insufficient to meet requirements.
Fats and oils are traditionally introduced into late gestation and lactation diets as a high-
energy supply to improve neonatal survival and milk yield, and to reduce mobilization
of body reserves. Furthermore, the efficiency of using metabolizable energy from lipids
is very high, and they have a minimum heat increment compared with other nutrients,
thereby reducing summer heat stress. Increasing the energy intake of sows during the
anabolic phase of gestation is likely to increase the amount of fat available for mobilization
during late pregnancy, and may result in enhanced sow performance during lactation.
Besides their general importance as an energy source, fats and oils are also a source of
essential fatty acids. Recent studies have shown that several fatty acids appear to improve
body function and may be important in physiological processes such as neonatal immune
function and sow fertility. This chapter mainly focuses on the recent advances in dietary
uses of omega fatty acids (n-3 and n-6 FA) and conjugated linoleic acid to enhance
reproductive performance and immunology of sows as well as the performance and
immune status of their foetuses and neonates.
Keywords:
conjugated linoleic acid, immune status, omega fatty acids, performance,
piglet, sow
16.1
Introduction
The reproductive performance of sows is crucial for determining profitability of a
farrowing unit and it is dependent on a complex interplay between management and
sow biological factors, impacting on sow fertility, embryo survival, foetal development,
and piglet delivery and survival (Tanghe and De Smet, 2013). Dietary fat inclusion for
late-gestating sows may improve colostrum yield and increase neonatal piglet survival
(Hansen
et al.
, 2012). Over the last two decades, many studies have evaluated the effect of
supplementing gestation and lactation diets with polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) such
as docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and conjugated linoleic
acid (CLA), which can benefit pregnant and lactating sows under catabolic conditions
by improving foetal growth, neonatal health and lactation performance.
