Exposure to maternal feces in lactation influences piglet enteric microbiota, growth, and survival preweaning

Abstract

It is known that gilt progeny performance is reduced compared with sow progeny. Previous research suggests that the presence of maternal feces in early life improves the health and survival of offspring. Therefore, we aimed to determine whether contact with feces from multiparous (MP) sows would improve the growth and survival of piglets born and reared on primiparous (P1) sows and if so, whether these differences are associated with the gut microbiota. Four treatments were applied for 10 days: Donor (n = 29) piglets had limited access to maternal feces as, each morning, sow feces were removed and placed in the crate of a P1 sow (P1-FT; n = 30 piglets) and P1-Con (n = 29) and MP-Con (n = 33) piglets had access to their own mothers' feces. All piglets were weighed on days 1, 3, 10, and 18. Fecal samples were collected from a subset of sows (n = 10/treatment) 3 days post farrow and from two female piglets/litter on days 10 and 18 (n = 20/treatment) and subject to 16S rRNA amplicon analysis. Escherichia, Clostridium, Campylobacter, and Treponema were more abundant in MP sows, while P1 sows had a higher abundance of Lactobacillus and Prevotella. At 10 days, P1 progeny fecal microbiota differed, and growth and survival were reduced when compared with MP progeny. No treatment effect was observed for P1-FT piglets (P > 0.05). Donor piglets had a different fecal microbiota and improved weight and survival then all other treatments (P < 0.05). Overall, the removal of sow feces from the farrowing crate improved piglet microbiota development, growth, and survival.

Keywords: health; microbiota; parity; pig; postpartum; progeny.

Figure 1.

The effect of treatment (Donor, MP-Con, P1-Con, and P1-FT) on average piglet weight (kg ± SEM) at 1, 3, 10, and 18 days of age. Within age, means with differing letters are significantly different (P < 0.05).

Figure 2.

nMDS ordination showing the differences in relatedness of fecal bacterial genera from MP (triangle) or P1 (inverted triangle) sows, calculated using Bray–Curtis distances. Points on the ordination represent individual sow fecal samples which are positioned based on their similarity to other communities in a two-dimensional space. Points more closely clustered represent microbial communities more closely related to one another based on taxa composition and abundance.

Figure 3.

Average abundance of bacterial genera contributing significantly (average dissimilarity/standard deviation > 1) to the top 60% of dissimilarity between MP and P1 sows 3 days post-partum. Genera above the broken line were more abundant in P1 sows and all genera below the broken line were more abundant in MP sows.

Figure 4.

Average abundance of the phyla present within the feces of 10 day old piglets in the Donor, MP-Con, P1-Con, and P1-FT treatments.

Figure 5.

Boxplots demonstrating the differences between bacterial genera for piglets in treatments: Donor, MP-Con, P1-Con, and P1-FT for (A) Shannon’s diversity, (B) Pielou’s Evenness, and (C) Number of taxa. Subscripts without a common letter denote a significant difference between treatments (P < 0.05).