Value of Creep Feeding

Suckling piglets have high potential for growth. Studies show that piglets artificially reared can gain at twice the rate of piglets reared by sows. This indicates a large part of piglet biological growth potential remains unachieved in practice, and that increasing the nutrient supply to suckling piglets can further improve birth-to-weaning growth rates.

A reasonable target for preweaning growth rates is 0.62 to 0.66 lb./day to achieve weaning weights of 16-17 lb. at 20 to 22 days of age.

The first and most important option is to improve sow milk output by increasing lactation feed intake of an appropriately formulated lactation diet.

However, milk production becomes limiting at Day 7 to 10 of lactation. This suggests that the difference between the need for nutrients to sustain piglet growth and the nutrient supply increases as lactation proceeds.

Creep feeding, the practice of feeding a solid diet to piglets during lactation, is the most common and easiest way of supplemental feeding of suckling piglets. The usual justifications for creep feeding are:

• Provide supplemental milk production, especially to sows nursing large litters;

• Prevent preweaning mortality;

• Increase weaning weights;

• Initiate and promote gut and digestive enzyme development to digest nutrient sources other than sow's milk; and

• Reduce severity of postweaning growth reduction and improve postweaning performance.

Some of these benefits have been observed in older weaning ages (4 weeks and over), but little research data indicates benefits of creep feeding to piglets weaned at less than 3 weeks of age. Recently, there has been promising results that may support the value of creep feeding piglets even for 21-day weaning ages.

Pattern of Creep Feed Intake

There are different recommendations on when to initiate creep feeding, but creep feed is often introduced to suckling pigs between 7 to 14 days of age. Daily and total creep feed consumption is highly variable between litters. Also, in our studies, about 75% of the total creep feed intake was consumed in the week prior to weaning (Figure 2).

Contrary to some observations, starting pigs on creep feed when they are older does not have a detrimental effect on the amount of feed the pigs eat. Older pigs seem to accept creep feed more readily than younger pigs, and may actually consume as much or more creep feed overall, compared to pigs started on creep feed at a younger age. It may be more practical to start creep feeding for as little as three to seven days prior to weaning and obtain similar creep feed intake as compared to providing for longer periods prior to weaning.

In recent research, creep feeding in piglets weaned at 21 days of age did not improve weaning weights compared to piglets not provided with creep feed. However, there was evidence that ‘eaters,’ which are piglets that positively consumed creep feed, grew faster after weaning and had higher initial postweaning feed intake than piglets that did not consume creep feed.

Eaters have a shorter time before they begin to consume solid feed after they are weaned than non-eater piglets. Eaters also had higher nutrient absorption rates. This suggests that increasing the proportion of eaters in whole litters may potentially improve postweaning performance. We've studied some of the factors that could encourage more piglets to consume creep feed and become eaters (Table 5).

Restricted feeding of lactating sows did not increase creep feed intake nor the proportion of eaters within litters. This suggests that a limited nutrient supply to piglets through lower milk production fails to promote greater piglet creep feed consumption. Also, this suggests that creep feeding practices are not a substitute for maximizing lactation feed intake.

Creep feeding from 7 days of age (13 days prior to weaning) produced 80% of piglets classified as eaters, compared to about 70% of pigs classified as eaters when provided creep feed at six or two days prior to weaning.

Longer durations of creep feeding did not affect preweaning gain and weaning weights, but did increase the proportion of eaters in whole litters. However, 70% were classified as eaters by providing creep feed for only two days preweaning.