9 The Trusted Source for Canada’s Pork Producers Better Pork | December 2023 Make it a REALITY Does the future of your operation feel unclear? Let’s connect the dots. Per m . The PIC®800 is proven to sire robust pigs built to thrive against any challenge. His easy-to-handle, efficient offspring deliver a clear economic advantage. Choose PIC®800 to make continuous improvement a reality in your operation. Contact your PIC representative today or visit pic.com. ACID BINDING CAPACITY an environment where opportunistic pathogens can grow, potentially compromising the digestive tract and leading to clinical infections, diseases, and, in severe cases, mortality. From a nutritional perspective, the inadequate acidification of the stomach can often be attributed to the high acid-binding capacity (ABC) of the ingredients in the feed. The ABC concept revolves around the adjustment of stomach acidity by incorporating ingredients with low acid-binding properties. This ABC value is measured by a standard laboratory test at a pH of 4, denoted as ABC-4. The higher the ABC-4 value, the greater the amount of acid the piglet must secrete to reduce the pH to 4, a critical step for activating digestive enzymes and breaking down proteins into peptides. At the Trouw Nutrition Research Centre and our validation facilities, we have undertaken eight studies over the past few years, directly or indirectly examining the influence of diet ABC-4 values on nursery performance. A portion of these studies were carried out at our validation sites in Canada under real-world, commercial conditions. Our latest research, presented at the 2023 Midwest Section Animal Science Meeting, examined the effects of ABC4 levels in diets with either high zinc or low zinc on the growth performance of nursery pigs. Overall, in these studies, reducing the ABC-4 values of both high zinc and low zinc diets through the use of acidifiers and/ or different calcium sources improved the feed efficiency of pigs during the nursery phase. We are actively engaged in research to evaluate the ABC-4 values of the ingredients and medications used in nursery diets. Furthermore, we are investigating the ideal ABC-4 levels within complex early nursery diets under various zinc levels and health conditions. As concerns about the use of pharmacological levels of zinc continue to rise, the formulation of a diet featuring a low ABC-4 value holds promise in enhancing gut health and, in turn, the performance of early nursery pigs. This approach can offer valuable support to producers in the post- weaning phase, especially when they aim to use nutritional levels of zinc. BP MOHSEN ABEDIN, PHD Mohsen Abedin, PhD is the director of swine technology application for Trouw Nutrition North America. Newly-weaned piglets produce insufficient gastric acid, resulting in poor performance. Trouw photo
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