Dr. Martin Nyachoti-University of Manitoba:
I think one of the most important considerations is to make sure that the feed that we put together, first of all pigs can actually eat that feed and number two that they can be able to digest that feed.
The main challenge in that case is the piglet is used to taking the mother's milk, which is very delicious, it's in a liquid form and when we wean the pig we put it on a solid feed.
The solid feed is kind of foreign to the piglet so what we want to introduce the piglets, while they're still with the sow, to a dry feed by introducing a creep feed for example where they can get a chance to get used to eating a dry feed.
So we have to introduce the piglet to the feed, we have train the piglet to actually eat the dry feed.
We might, in some cases, people might use a wet feed for example to try and encounrage feed intake or simply selecting the type of ingredients that taste good to the piglets.
Dr. Nyachoti says inadequate feed intake following weaning will result in damage in the lining of the gut which means enzyme development and the ability to digest feed and absorb nuterients will be affected, so we have to make sure the piglet will eat the feed.
Source: Farmscape