LWV22119 MEER UIT MEST (TS-02-209-022)

This project aims to develop tools that allow pig farmers and their suppliers and advisers to use faecal characteristics for monitoring and improving nutrient utilization and health and well-being of pigs as important elements of sustainable pig husbandry. Faeces contain a mixture of undigested remains of feed ingredients, endogenously secreted components related to the digestive processes and intestinal health and microbial biomass originating from the intestinal microbiome. Faeces characteristics reflect the composition and activity of the intestinal microbiome, nutrient digestibility and thereby nutrient excretion. Changes in faecal composition in time, or differences in faecal composition between populations and individual pigs can reflect changes/differences in nutrient utilization, as caused by farm management and farm health status, and can also reflect related variation in animal welfare. So far, faecal characteristics, apart from faecal consistency, are hardly used as source of information on farm to monitor animal performance and health as basis for on farm nutritional, health and management interventions. This PPP focusses on the exploration and establishment of relationships between faecal composition of pigs and animal performance, health and welfare. Based on these relationships quick analytical methods will be developed for on farm application to detect changes in nutrient efficiency, clinical and subclinical health and welfare. Such tools will allow farmers, together with their advisers,
to design interventions (nutritional, management) for improving health, welfare and nutrient efficiency.