There are a number of reasons that sow nutritional performance during lactation is of great interest to producers. In a series of extension articles, Flowers (2002a,b) indicated that, when troubleshooting reproductive problems in sows, a key event to investigate carefully is feed intake during previous lactation. Besides the reproductive performance of the sow, piglet performance is also intrin...

The effect of feeding sows a starch diet or a diet with a high level of nonstarch polysaccharides (NSP) during gestation, lactation, or both gestation and lactation during the first three parities on reproductive performance, body weight, and backfat was studied. Four-hundred and forty-four postpuberal gilts were allotted to a 2 x 2 x 2 factorial experiment. Treatments were diet composition dur...

We evaluated 2 strains of mice for their utility in the investigation of nutritional and molecular regulatory mechanisms of lactation. The lactational performance and milk composition were characterized for an inbred mouse strain, inbred Quackenbush Swiss line 5 (QSi5) selected persistently for fecundity, and a nonselected strain, CBA. The milk yield assessed by changes in BW in response to suc...

Although evidence from domestic and laboratory species suggests that reproductive experience plays a critical role in the development of aspects of lactation performance, whether reproductive experience may have a significant influence on milk energy transfer to neonates in wild populations has not been directly investigated. We compared maternal energy expenditures and pup growth and energy de...

Partial budget analysis is an effective production tool to evaluate economic implications of proposed changes to pig production systems. We describe a partial-budgeting tool that estimates the effects of lactation space and lactation-space management on net revenue in a multi-site production system. A partial-budgeting worksheet is linked to an economic model that couples production-system-spec...

The objective of this study was to examine the effect of compensatory growth nutritional regimen on mammary gland growth and lactation. One hundred twenty-two Sprague Dawley female rats (35 days of age) were randomly assigned to either a control or a stair-step compensatory nutrition (SSCN) feeding regimen or an alternating 2-2-3-3-week schedule beginning with 40% energy restriction for 2 weeks...

The aim of commercial pig breeding programs is to maximize the number of pigs produced per sow per year. Given that sows exhibit an estrus during lactation is a potential means of increasing productivity of a pig breeding herd without reducing in lactation length, conventionally, weaning of piglets at a relatively young age is often related to post-weaning piglet performance which compromises p...

A total of 146 primiparous sows was used in four replications of an experiment to investigate the effect of energy intake during a 28-d lactation on sow and litter performance. Dietary treatments consisted of three energy intakes; 10, 12 or 14 Mcal of metabolizable energy (ME) X sow-1 X d-1. All sows were fed equal amounts of crude protein, vitamins and minerals daily, which met or exceeded sta...

This experiment was conducted to investigate the effects of dietary supplementation of magnesium sulfate (MgSO4) during late gestation and lactation on sow and litter performance, fecal moisture, blood biochemistry parameters, immunoglobulin levels and milk composition in sows. Forty-eight sows (Yorkshire×Landrace, 4th to 5th parity) were randomly allocated to 1 of 4 dietary treatments suppleme...

The goal of this study was to evaluate the effects of lactation stage and individual performance on milk cis-9, trans-11 conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) content in dairy cows. In experiment 1, the milk cis-9, trans-11 CLA content from dairy cows in early (0.33±0.014%), middle (0.37±0.010%), and late stages (0.44±0.020%) showed significant differences (p<0.05); and the individual contents of the ...