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Vitamin Intake and the Nutritive Contribution of Alfalfa to Successive Generation Performance of Swine¹

Ohio Agricultural Experiment Station, Wooster²

Abstract

Levels of 18% ground, sun-cured alfalfa hay in a breeding-gestation-lactation ration and 5% in a growing-finishing ration were used to determine the extent to which alfalfa would furnish the vitamins or other factors needed for successive generation performance of swine in drylot. Similar groups of animals received alfalfa-free rations with and without vitamin supplementation. Seventy-five gilts were used in the 3-year study, and performance was measured through the farrow of fourth-generation pigs. In each generation gilt pigs were selected within ration treatment for continuation of the study.

A lack of receptiveness to the boar at breeding or the complete absence of any external evidence of estrus influenced the number of females which farrowed. Of the gilts available for breeding 72, 84 and 76% farrowed when fed the alfalfa-containing, vitamin-supplemented alfalfa-free ration, or the alfalfa-free basal ration, respectively.

Neither the presence of ground, sun-cured alfalfa in the ration nor added vitamins in the alfalfa-free ration had a significant influence on the number of pigs farrowed alive or stillborn, birth weight or vigor of pigs at birth. Pigs in five of seven litters farrowed by second-generation gilts which had received the alfalfa-free basal ration were affected by a locomotor syndrome early in life. The cause of the condition was not determined, and the condition did not appear in pigs farrowed by third-generation gilts continued on the same ration treatment.

Plasma vitamin A was affected significantly in both sows and pigs by ration treatment, and the level in lactating sows 3 or 6 weeks after farrowing was lower than the average level of pigs in their litter.

¹ Approved for publication as Journal Article No. 8–65 by the Associate Director of the Ohio Agricultural Experiment Station, Wooster, Ohio.

² Department of Animal Science.