The water intake of weaned pigs from 3 to 6 weeks of age

Abstract

The use of drinking water as a vehicle for the medication of early weaned pigs offers an advantage over infeed medication in that water intake postweaning is substantially higher than feed intake. A precondition for effective water medication is the accurate assessment of water intake. At present there is little published information on the water demand of early weaned piglets reared under contemporary conditions of housing and nutrition. The objective of this study was to establish whether the water intake of early weaned piglets could be predicted from easily measured variables such as feed intake and liveweight.