Effects of specialty proteins as alternatives to bovine or porcine spray-dried plasma in non-medicated diets fed to weaned pigs housed in an unsanitary environment

Crenshaw, J. D.; Campbell, J. M.; Polo, J.; Stein, H. H.

Reduced growth performance of pigs housed in an unsanitary environment compared to a sanitary environment has been reported (Zhao et al., 2007; Berrocoso et al., 2015; Montagne et al., 2015) . For both experiments, pens were not cleaned and sanitized after the most recent housing of pigs. Unsanitary pens were used as an attempt to increase post-weaning stress on pigs so that potential bioactivity of the studied specialty proteins on pig growth could be better differentiated when compared to soy protein concentrate (SPC) as a negative control specialty protein and SDPP or SDBP as the respective positive control specialty protein used in Exp. 1 and 2. Also, during both experiments, antimicrobials in feed, medications and electrolytes in drinking water, and individual pig medications were not used to exclude potential confounding effects of these factors on animal performance response to dietary treatments.