Effect of dietary seaweed extracts and fish oil supplementation in sows on performance, intestinal microflora, intestinal morphology, volatile fatty acid concentrations and immune status of weaned pigs

Abstract

A 2 × 2 factorial experiment (ten sows per treatment) was conducted to investigate the effect of maternal dietary supplementation with a seaweed extract (SWE; 0v.10·0 g/d) and fish oil (FO; 0v.100 g/d) inclusion from day 109 of gestation until weaning (day 26) on pig performance post-weaning (PW) and intestinal morphology, selected microflora and immune status of pigs 9 d PW. The SWE contained laminarin (10 %), fucoidan (8 %) and ash (82 %) and the FO contained 40 % EPA and 25 % DHA. Pigs weaned from SWE-supplemented sows had higher daily gain (P = 0·063) between days 0 and 21 PW and pigs weaned from FO-supplemented sows had higher daily gain (P < 0·05) and gain to feed ratio (P < 0·01) between days 7 and 14 PW. There was an interaction between maternal SWE and FO supplementation on caecalEscherichia colinumbers (P < 0·05) and the villous height to crypt depth ratio in the ileum (P < 0·01) and jejunum (P < 0·05) in pigs 9 d PW. Pigs weaned from SWE-supplemented sows had lower caecalE.coliand a higher villous height to crypt depth ratio in the ileum and jejunum compared with non-SWE-supplemented sows (P < 0·05). There was no effect of SWE onE.colinumbers and villous height to crypt depth ratio with FO inclusion. Maternal FO supplementation induced an increase in colonic mRNA abundance of IL-1α and IL-6 (P < 0·05), while SWE supplementation induced an increase in ileal TNF-α (P < 0·01) and colonic TFF3 mRNA expression (P < 0·05). In conclusion, these results demonstrate that SWE and FO supplementation to the maternal diet influenced the gastrointestinal environment and performance of the weaned pig.