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Matching Livestock Systems with Available Resources |
MEKARN Regional Conference 2007 |
Diarrhea in piglets is a common disease resulting in high mortality causing high economic loss for the farmers keeping pigs. Antibiotics may be effective in treatment but the once-diseased piglets grow usually more slowly. Antibiotic supplements used as preventive agents are also not welcomed because this may result in the development of drug-resistant bacterial strains and the chemicals’ residues remained in meats and other animal products may harm the consumers’ health. Probiotics and prebiotics are new approaches. In these categories may also be medicinal herbs that are used traditionally to treat humans. In the past, we have tested application of Achyranthes aspera (“co xuoc” in Vietnamese) and obtained that given per-orally in fresh form to sows from 100th day of gestation through parturition and during lactation with the single and double-sized doses applied to humans the herb showed good effects on suckling piglets as decreased diarrhea incidence, increased the animals’ live body weight at weaning and that the double-sized doses are safe to sows. However, the application of the herb during gestation appeared to decrease the litter size.
In this experiment we have tried to apply the herbs to sows after parturition and to piglets from 20th day age with creep and concluded that the application to mother sows and in creep has improved the production capacity of the piglets (5-day interval diarrhea prevalence of piglets whose mother sows have been received 30 g “co xuoc” daily as well as in piglets obtained the herb in creep was much lower than that of the piglets that did not received the herb either directly in creep or indirectly through their mother sows) (respectively 20 , 27 ill cases versus 35 cases counted at 5-day interval median day during 45-day suckling period), the average daily weight gain of treated piglets, as well as their whole-litter weights were much higher, in both absolute and relative values, than that of non-treated piglets – respective 8.39, 8.45 and versus 7.07 times as high as live weights of piglets at 45-day age (at weaning) in comparison to their weights at birth, meanwhile the whole periods average weight gains are respectively 6.65, 6.88 and 6.04 g. The number of aerobic bacteria in normal dung samples collected from the three groups did not show clear effect of the herb on the microflora meanwhile measuring the immune responses of the piglets to NDV sensibilization showed that the effect of the herb application seemed related to increase of the piglets’ antigen-induced antibody producing capacity. Probably, the mode of the effects of the herb on the animals is that of some hormones.