The use of natural feed additives in the pig fattening phase are often excluded on the assumption of prohibitive cost; yet losing pigs at this stage carries the greatest economic penalty. However, a combination of coated essential oils, yeast cell wall fractions, prebiotics, flavonoids, and saponins, can improve fattening pig health and performance, reduce medicine cost and return a profit.
Advanced Ag Products LLC, USA
Swine production continues evolving to produce healthy, welfare-friendly, retailer/consumer friendly, and cost-effective pork. While the adoption of aggressive policies to lower antibiotic use in many countries has been successful, management changes are often necessary to maintain high health and welfare standards. Changes in cage legislation, for example in the EU, will lead to the ban of farrowing crates requiring, again, a modification of management practices. From the ban in many markets (e.g. EU, Russia, and China) on the use of ractopamine for improving meat leanness and feed efficiency to most recently, the ban on use of therapeutic levels of zinc (those above 150 ppm) in the EU, many of the tools pig producers use to manage gut health and performance are disappearing. Add to this, changing pig genetics, volatile feed prices, outbreaks of disease such as African Swine fever that continues its progress across the globe, or PRRS which is endemic in many herds, the challenges for swine producers are becoming more obvious. Therefore, finding solutions to lessen some of these previous mentioned issues is a must.
FEED ADDITIVE FOCUS ON NURSERY PIGS
There has always been a strong focus on the sow and weaning pigs. If the sow is healthy and in good condition, she should produce, strong thriving piglets. However, it could be argued that the development of hyperprolific sows has a negative effect on the sow; longer farrowing times can compromise sow health and welfare, and despite best efforts in management, piglet mortality is still high prior to weaning. Strategies to support both sow and weaning pigs include feeding and nutritional programs e.g., creep feeding; health programmes; and management such as enhanced biosecurity, sorting strategies and hospital pens. At this stage of production, feed additives are often used, and those additives can include probiotics, organic acids, yeast products, and plant-based compounds or phytogenics. The removal of therapeutic levels of zinc in several markets has accelerated the adoption of feed additives. The combination of these various approaches, including feed additives helps pigs achieve the required exit weights from the nursery, hopefully with a robust health status. But after this high attention to detail, what happens once the pig leaves the nursery and enters grow/finish?
WHAT ABOUT FATTENING PIGS?
Nutritional strategies are essential in grow finish pigs; the success of balancing feed intake versus feed conversion to deliver high carcass yield will have a significant impact on profitability. Nutritional strategies and phase feeding are also important for good intestinal health. As mentioned at the beginning, many of the tools that a producer would use to help manage efficiency e.g., ractopamine, or to counter poor gut health e.g., antibiotics or antibiotic growth promoters, are no longer available or severely restricted. But the challenges on fattening pig are still present, viral diseases, feed contaminants, environment and bacterial challenges are just a few examples. Typically, the broad range of natural additives we may use in feed or water for piglets to support intestinal health, immunity, etc. are seldom applied in mainstream swine production, with an argument that they are cost prohibitive. Indeed, the focus of additives in the fattening phase, understandably, tends to be feed efficiency rather than health. Yet, during fattening, especially at the end of production is the worst time to lose pigs. As an example, Cornelison et al. (2018) found losses of $8.49 to $29.82/pig due to disease challenges. Improving the health status of the pig can reduce the animals’ susceptibility to disease and potentially mitigate some of the negative impacts of disease in the herd. Therefore, if a natural feed additive can enhance intestinal health and reduce the impact of disease, is it always cost prohibitive?
ALL-NATURAL FEED ADDITIVES AND THEIR FIELD APPLICATION
Feed additives based on natural compounds are diverse but for clarity, we exclude enzymes from this discussion. The importance of enzymes to improve feed digestibility and nutrient availability is well-documented and the products of enzymatic activity and their potential role as pre- and post-biotics continues to be elucidated. Common natural feed additive ingredients include yeast and yeast cell wall fragments, plant, and plant extracts e.g., essential oils, probiotics, and acids. There are abundant reports in the scientific literature on the efficacy of these ingredients, or limited combinations thereof, for example, enhanced immune status, improved antioxidant capacity or increased feed efficiency in fattening pigs. Comparison between studies is often difficult and further compounded by the physical preparation of the ingredients. The results from controlled laboratory studies often do not translate well to application in the field when conditions are less controlled. Furthermore, such studies do not include a cost-benefit analysis, an essential step in their evaluation for commercial evaluation.
A UNIQUE COMBINATION OF COATED ALL-NATURAL INGREDIENTS
While all-natural feed additives will often combine two, or perhaps three, ingredients e.g., essential oils and other plant extracts or probiotics and prebiotics, there are very few products that combine five ingredient groups. By-O-reg+ 360 (Advanced Ag Products, USA) is one such example, developed specifically for fattening pigs.
By-O-reg+ is a combination of essential oils based on the Lamiaceae and Lauraceae families, yeast cell wall fractions, prebiotics, flavonoids and saponins. Essential oils from the Lamiaceae and Lauraceae, for example oregano, thyme, and mint, are known for their strong antimicrobial and antioxidant properties as well as their ability to drive feed intake. Yeast cell wall fragments have been documented to modulate immune responses, enhance gut integrity, and mitigate pathogen loads. Prebiotics are a nutrient source for the intestinal microbiota and have the potential to manage inflammation via their immunomodulatory properties. Flavonoids have strong antioxidant properties while saponins can disrupt microbial and protozoal cells walls, modulate immunity and lower faecal ammonia.
The key to the efficacy of By-O-reg+ 360 however, is the use of a proprietary coating technology known as CF20. Within the product, a proportion of the essential oils and saponins are coated. Unlike traditional encapsulation technologies that completely seal the essential oils in a fat or polysaccharide matrix for example, or mineral carriers that function as sponges, CF20 is more analogous to a chocolate chip cookie. The essential oil and saponin droplets are trapped within the coating matrix, some droplets completely coated and some partially coated. This creates a slow release of oils down the digestive tract but the coated is not degraded until the small intestine and beyond. As well as protecting the essential oils and saponin from releasing too early in the digestive tract the coating increases the bioavailability of the oils, enhancing their efficacy.
THE REAL-WORLD EFFICACY OF BY-O-REG+ 360
In the USA, ionophore based feed additives e.g., narasin, are still used in fattening pigs to increase weight gain and improve efficiency. Three grow/finish farms were selected to run a side-by-side comparison of an in-feed ionophore and By-O-reg+ 360 with over 9,000 animals used in the evaluation and average starting weight ranged from 27-31kg/pig (Table 1). On average, pigs fed the all-natural feed additive combination By-O-reg+ 360, achieved target weight 6.7 days earlier than those fed narasin.
Performance
On all three farms, pigs fed By-O-reg+ 360 had higher final bodyweight and lower FCR than pigs fed narasin (Figure 1a & 1b). Average daily gain (ADG) was 2.5-14.5% higher in pigs fed By-O-reg+ 360 versus narasin while mortality was either similar between groups or up to 47% lower in those animals receiving By-O-reg+ 360 (Table 1).
Reducing late mortality
Haemorrhagic Bowel Syndrome (HBS) is a condition that affects growing and fattening pigs whereby animals are found dead and, characteristically, have a pale and distended carcass with a distended intestinal tract containing unclotted blood (Fig 2). While the exacte cause is unknown, risk factors are considered to include change in social status, issues with water and feed quality and disrupted feed intake. In the USA, HBS could be responsible for up to 7% of herd mortality. Where late mortality was attributed to HBS, the inclusion of By-O-reg+ 360 reduced mortalities by up to 95% (Table 2).
THE ECONOMICS OF USING BY-O-REG+ 360 IN FATTENING PIGS
As mentioned earlier, there is often a perception that all natural feed additives are too expensive to deliver a return on investment in fattening pigs. In the case of HBS outbreaks in the herd, the use of By-O-reg+ 360 led to an average 32% lower medicine costs/pig. Not only is that important financially, but it is a significant step to reducing medication usage in pigs. When looking at the overall profitability per pig, the inclusion of By-O-reg+ 360 yields an increase of $7.59/pig after product costs, with a return on investment >5. Interestingly, the improved feed efficiency observed is reflected in an increase in percentage carcass leanness (approximately 1%), adding further value for the swine producer.
SUMMARY
Using feed additives and other alternatives to antimicrobials should play a part in the strategy of health management in fattening pigs, to help minimise the impact of disease and financial losses associated with losing animals late in production. A cost/benefit analysis should always be the first step to evaluate the value of adding an additive, rather than basing decisions on the cost of inclusion at the exclusion of overall potential benefit. Feed additives are often based on a single type of ingredient, with limited scope of activity. But if you can combine different ingredients, harness their differing and broad ranges of activity, and protect those ingredients to ensure they are efficacious where they need to be, an all-natural feed additive such as By-O-reg+ 360 can be a powerful tool to improve the economics and welfare of grow/finish pigs.
About Dr David Harrington
Dr David Harrington is the Managing Director at teamTWO Solutions (Denmark) and acting Monogastric Technical Manager at Advanced Ag products LLC (USA). He obtained his BSc (Hons) and MSc from Edinburgh University, UK, and his Ph.D from Newcastle University, UK researching avian immune responses to ectoparasite infections. His early career was focused on the development and commercial support of swine and poultry vaccines mainly in the EU before moving into feed additives in both commercial/strategic and technical roles globally.
