Abstract
In modern swine production, there is a heightened interest surrounding the nutrition of the young pig as a result of the necessity of nursery pig nutrition programs to evolve, due to the inevitability of stress during the weaning event and the growing challenges experienced in commercial pig operations at this stage of production. Therefore, it is no longer sufficient to design a nutrition program that focuses solely on delivering the right nutrients for a pig at weaning that maximizes growth performance during the nursery period, as this may not result in desired outcomes from weaning to harvest. Consequently, nursery programs are being further enhanced with a renewed focus on nutritional technologies and strategies that emphasize feed intake, but more importantly, that maximize the probability of livability in the nursery. However, there is a growing need for large scale practical research that evaluates these nutritional technologies and strategies, since most of the published research has been done with a limited number of animals that limits the ability to detect mortality differences. Thus, this research will require a different model compared to that which has been used historically for nursery nutrition research. Some of the key elements of this research model include experimental design with the appropriate statistical power to detect mortality differences, in addition to conducting the experiments in conditions that are similar to the management and environment that resembles commercial production specific to the system, among others. To that end, it will be the objective of this presentation to share some of the large-scale research focused on minimizing disruption of nutrient intake using nutritional technologies that are supplementary to typical nursery diets, offering the potential to reduce morbidity and mortality of pigs raised on wean-to-market facilities.