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.

Translate basic science to industry innovation inflammatory cytokine disruption of intestinal, respiratory, and reproductive mucosal barrier function (Pérez-Bosque et al., 2016) . Other plasma proteins, such as growth factors and bioactive peptides, may also contribute to actions of plasma that beneficially influence mucosal barrier surfaces (Pérez-Bosque et al., 2016) . In Exp. 1, after all pigs were fed a common diet absent of the specialty proteins starting at d 15, only pigs previously fed the 2.5% SDPP diet had significantly higher average BW and ADFI at d 28 than pigs previously fed diets with SPC, 0.33 or 1.00% APP. By d 28 ADG did not differ significantly for pigs previously fed any of the specialty proteins. Other research has observed similar results for ADG of pigs fed diets with SDPP compared to SPC as observed in Exp. 1 (Torrallardona, 2010) . Recently, Pujols et al. (2016) reported that ADG and BW were increased during the initial 2 wk post-weaning when 6% SDPP was included in the diet compared to SPC, however no differences for ADG or average BW among starter diets was observed at d 48, although mortality was reduced at d 48 and 145 and carcass weight was increased for pigs previously fed SDPP in the starter diet. The increased ADG and BW of pigs fed diets with SDPP during the initial 2 wk after weaning may or may not be maintained to the end of the nursery phase depending on the severity of post-weaning stress, ability of pigs to recover, and the incidence and degree of subsequent stress later in the nursery. The stress associated with weaning may have consequences on intestinal barrier function resulting in compromised performance in later life stages. Use of SDP in starter diets has been demonstrated to attenuate some of the effects of barrier dysfunctions associated with weaning stress (Peace et al., 2011; Boyer et al., 2015) .