THE FEEDING OF PIGS

Taranaki Daily News, 1 December 1934, Page 24 (Supplement)

THE FEEDING OF PIGS

WALLACEVILLE RESULTS. SKIM MILK EXPERIMENTS. . The trouble caused by the shortage of vitamin A in skim milk fed to pigs is shown by the experiments carried out at the Wallaceville Veterinary Laboratory and commented on in the annual report of that institution. The report states that groups of pigs from the same litter were fed after weaning, the one group on whole milk and the other on skim-milk of 015 per cent, fat content. Both groups were given meat-meal only as a supplement, but no green food. After three weeks, when they were settled on these foods and were growing well, B. suipestifer was introduced by culture into both groups. The skim-milk group scoured badly, one died, and one became very ill but later recovered. This group was put back over 101 b on the average at this stage and did not catch up with the whole-milk group. This latter group did not show any effect whatever from the suipestifer culture, for they grew well and were extraordinarily good pigs.

At post-mortem the blood was found to be normal chemically in both groups, with no significant difference, there was a positive agglutination in all pigs to B. suipestifer antigen, this being absent at the commencement of the experiment, ar-’ the organs were on the whole normal except in the heaviest and best pig of the whole-milk group, which had an ulcerated caecum. The protective power of the whole-milk was therefore evident Other experiments on these lines are being planned for the new year. Skimmilk was found to be almost entirely deficient in vitamins A and D while whole milk contained twenty-eight units of vitamin A per pint, a fair but not a high figure.

This shortage of vitamin A in skimmilk is quite likely to be responsible for the trouble in young pigs, which ranges from alimentary and respiratory infection to nerve degeneration, ending in paralysis. Luckily feeding with materials rich in the accessory food factors offers no management difficulties.