174 Effects of Feeding Level and Diet Type during Wean-to-Estrus Interval on Reproductive Performance of Sows

Abstract This experiment was conducted to evaluate the effects of feeding level and diet type during wean-to-estrus interval (WEI). A total of 542 females (PIC-Camborough®) were used from weaning to the subsequent farrowing. Treatments were distributed in a factorial design 2 × 2 with 2 feeding levels during the WEI (2.6 or 3.4 kg/d) and 2 diet types [gestation (3.2 Mcal ME/kg and 0.69% SID Lys) or lactation (3.4 Mcal ME/kg and 1.4% SID lys)]. Dietary treatments were: Gest-High (GH), Gest-Low (GL), Lact-High (LH), Lact-Low (LL). Females were blocked by body condition using caliper score, parity, and randomly assigned to treatments. Average caliper body condition was 13 ± 2.0 and average parity was 4.5 ± 0.19. Females were fed 2.3 kg/d from 0-30 d of gestation, then 1.8 kg/d until farrowing. Data were analyzed using generalized linear mixed models with pen as the experimental unit, week and body condition as random effect, and parity as covariate. The WEI was 0.2 ± 0.12 d lower in the GH and LL compared to GL and LH (interaction, P=0.021). There were no evidences for differences between dietary treatments (P30.16) in farrowing rate, total born, stillborn, total litter weight, and born alive weight index. here was a marginally significant (P