Impact of Nursery Diet Protein Quality and Fish Oil Supplementation on Immune Response of Pigs

Feeding low cost and less complex nursery diets reduces growth performance during the nursery phase only, but does not affect growth performance up to market weight and carcass quality at slaughter (Skinner et al., 2013). However, the immune response – indicator of overall resistance to infectious diseases – was compromised in nursery pigs fed less complex diets (Levesque et al., 2013). Thus, the efficacy of less complex nursery diets appears limited during an immune challenge. Fish oil that has well proven immunomodulatory effects may be included in less complex diets to improve the pig’s immunological status.