Effects of Varying Creep Feed Duration on Pre-Weaning and Post-Weaning Performance and Behavior of Piglet and Sow (Report‪)‬

INTRODUCTION Piglets are given creep feed to fill the gap between their increasing nutrients requirement and nutrients supplied by the lactating sow because of the declining milk production, which may be insufficient to meet the steadily increasing demands from growing piglet. Generally, commercial recommendations on when to initiate creep feeding as early as 2 to 3 day of age to induce piglets to consume solid feed and achieve greater total creep feed consumption throughout lactation. Various studies have demonstrated the beneficial effect of creep feed on post-weaning performance, which is highly dependent on the absolute amount of creep feed consumption (Pajor et al., 1991; Carstensen et al., 2005). However, evidence on the effect of creep feeding duration on feed consumption and growth performance has been limited, and only Klindt (2003) showed that creep feeding from 5 day of age resulted in greater pre-weaning daily gains than creep feeding from 2 day prior to weaning. Recently, Sulabo et al. (2010) suggested creep feeding duration for 13 day (lactation period = 21 d) produced 10% unit more eaters than litters fed creep feed for 6 and 2 day. Bruininx et al. (2002) reported that eaters had more visits to the feeder and concomitantly had a greater rate of feed intake than non-eaters. Therefore, the duration of creep feeding could be an important factor in stimulating more pigs to consume more creep feed and subsequently greater daily gains.