Supplementing volatile-flavour herbal-extract mixture to the diet of sows and their weaned offspring improves the growth performance of weaned piglets

Abstract

A volatile herbal extract (VHE), consisting of 150 g/kg anethole, 15 g/kg bebaudioside A, 2.1 g/kg thymol, 2.0 g/kg eugenol and 2.3 g/kg cinnamic aldehyde, was fed to sows and their weaned offspring to evaluate its effect on the reproductive performance of sows and the growth performance of weaned piglets. A total of 18 sows (Landrace × Yorkshire) were randomly assigned to dietary treatments based on average parity (1.78) with nine replicates per treatment. The feeding period was 35 days, from d 7 before farrowing to d 7 after weaning. The lactation period was 21 d. A total of 96 piglets were randomly selected from each sow treatment group and allocated to 24 replicate pens with four pigs (mixed sex) per pen. The feeding period of weaned piglets was 35 days (phase 1, days 1-7; phase 2, days 8-21; phase 3, days 22-35). Dietary treatments in sows and weaned piglets consisted of a basal control diet with or without 500 mg/kg VHE. The data showed that VHE supplementation had no effect on the reproductive performance of sows, but improved the growth performance of weaned piglets, in which the increase of average daily gain during days 1-7 (P=0.006) and 1-35 (P=0.032) and feed efficiency during days 22-35 (P=0.026) and 1-35 (P=0.020) in weaned piglets were observed. Therefore, supplementing VHE to the diet of sows and their weaned offspring was beneficial to the growth performance of weaned piglets.