Palatability of piglet diets : role of salt and sugar
A. AUMAITRE
Station de Recherches sur
l’Élevage
des Porcs, I. R. A., C. N. R. Z.,78350
fouy
en.1osas
Incorporation
of certainproportions
of sugar( 5
to 10p.roo)
intopiglet-diets,
with the aim ofincreasing
thepalatability
haslong
been recommended. hour successiveexperiments
wereconducted
using
twomethodologies
in order to determine the nutritional and economicsignifi-
cance of this
practice.
In a first
experiment
thepalatability
of two feeds wascompared :
the one coated with sugar( 5
to
p. ioo), the
other(control feed) containing
p. 100sugar and offered as a single diet
to foursuccessive litters of
piglets
weaned at 8 weeks. The fecd intakesappeared
to be identical at 35or
5 6 days
of age. These results show thatcoating
of the feed was notadvantageous.
When asingle feed including pellets with to
15 p. roo of sugar was alloted to each litter( 31 replicates
pertreatment)
identical results were obtained.Furthermore, when
comparing simultaneously
the feed intake ofpiglets receiving
dietscontaining
either sucrose orglucose,
the results are differentaccording
to themethodology
used.If several feeds were offered at the same time, the animals weaned at 35
days
showed arapid
andexclusive
preference
for the feedcontaining
p. 100 sucrose( 512
g feed intake perday)
to thedetriment of the feed
containing
p. 100glucose ( 71
g feed intake perday)
and of the feed contai-ning
p. ioostarchy
mixtures with saccharin(feed
intake : y g perday). Conversely,
if theanimals received a
single
feedcontaining
p. 100sucrose, p. rooglucose
or 10p. 100glucose,
thefeed intakes
during
the sameperiod
were identical(6 51 , 6!!
and6 55 g/day/piglet respectively).
In the case of
supplementation
with various levels of salt(NaCI),
i. e. 0.5to I p. 100, the suckled animals showed amarked, rapid
and definitivepreference
for thenon-supplemented
feed,although only
the feedsupplemented
with 0.5 p. roo of saltcorresponded
to thequantitative
chlorine and sodium
requirements.
These results
suggest
that the notion ofpalatability
measuredby
thepreference of
thepiglet for
such and suchfeed accovding
to afree choice,
remains verysubjective.
Thus, such a
methodology
should not be used to estimate thequantitative requirements
forsucrose and sodium chloride in the