between‐experiment analysis of relationships linking dietary protein intake and post‐weaning diarrhea in weanling pigs under conditions of experimental infection with an enterotoxigenic strain of Escherichia coli

Numerous experiments have demonstrated that feeding a lower protein diet decreases protein fermentation in the gastrointestinal tract (GIT) and reduces the incidence of post‐weaning diarrhea (PWD). However, there is a lack of holistic evidence underpinning the relationship between feeding a lower protein diet and PWD in relation to physiological responses and protein fermentation in the GIT. The scope of this article, therefore, will: (i) focus on the impact of dietary protein levels on selected indices of GIT health in weaned pigs without and with experimental infection with an enterotoxigenic strain of Escherichia coli; and (ii) attempt to conduct regression analysis to examine the relationships between dietary‐origin protein intake, nitrogen fermentation indices, fecal consistency and the incidence of PWD. We used datasets generated from a series of four intensive experiments in weaned pigs. The collective results derived from these datasets indicate that restriction of daily protein intake to less than 60 g through feeding a lower protein diet for as little as 7 days after weaning reduced the incidence of PWD commensurate with a reduction in protein fermentation indices.