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Managing digestive troubles of post weaning pigs

By September 6, 2019January 12th, 2024Digestive efficiency, Animal Care
Reading Time: 3 minutes

Olmix Group launches SeaBiotaTM, to ensure digestive welfare of post weaning and finishing pigs.

In most of conventional farms, pigs are usually weaned between 21 and 28 days of age but it can sometimes even occur earlier. This is a critical step for the young piglet that requires a strong ability of adaptation. The separation with the mother (loss of contact, milk and the mother’s bacterial environment), the modification of the environment, the transport to another room or building, the mixing of litters, the transition from milk to creep feed, are all stress factors that will negatively impact animal health.

Olmix Group launches SeaBiota TM.

These changes also lead to consequences on the intestinal morphology of the piglet: we usually notice a decrease of intestinal villosity height, a reduced activity of digestive enzymes and a degradation of the protective mucus layer. At last, these factors disrupt the commensal gut flora and favors the development of pathogens populations at the origin of diarrheas during the post weaning period. The apparition of diarrheas and other diseases might motivate the use of antibiotics and/or zinc oxide supplementation at pharmacological prescriptions in the feed, often implying high veterinary costs, an increasing of bacteria resistance and environmental issues.

Once, the necessary measures of husbandry management have been set up to limit the risks of digestive troubles emergence (air and water control/feed/welfare/vaccines/density etc.), the use of SeaBiotaTM, a new complementary feed specially formulated for piglets can complete the approach.

  • SeaBiotaTM was developed to optimize digestive welfare and thus contributes to reduce the harmful effects of digestive troubles on piglets.
  • Its innovation lies in the synergy of several effective active ingredients in a unique and complete product easy to use (in drinking water via a dosing pump).
  • SeaBiotaTM enables to protect the digestive tract, to favor a balanced gut flora thanks to the use of selected algae extracts (MSP® MUCIN) allowing to reinforce the protective intestinal mucus layer and specific zinc, issued from a unique technological Olmix process.

The results of a field study carried out in 13 French farms selected for their recurrent digestive troubles episodes, showed with more than 75 batches that using SeaBiotaTM allows the optimisation of intestinal welfare and thus the management of digestive troubles while decreasing the supply of antibiotics in 75% of the cases.

In addition, a second study allowed to demonstrate that SeaBiotaTM can represent a substitute to the classical use of zinc oxide with a dosage adapted to the farm and taking into account the critical periods of piglet’s life.

Thus, SeaBiotaTM proves to be an effective tool for the digestive welfare of weaned piglets and can be used in a context of digestive troubles management for the weaning period.

SeaBiotaTM completes Olmix digestive welfare range: for optimal results but also as a part of an antibiotic free program, it can be used in association with Seagut® Paste and Seagut® Powder to face digestive troubles before weaning.