How to determine losses from inadequate vitamin nutrition

Video Transcription

It's not always easy to identify because there's sometimes subclinical losses. For instance, one thing that still occurs in the swine industry sometimes is mulberry heart disease in the nursery pigs and it's not very common but when it does occur, it's a few pigs and it might be an indication that there's a need for improving supplementation levels to reduce the potential for losses due to mulberry heart disease, which is characteristic of either vitamin E or selenium deficiency.

It's pretty common during that period in pigs, because they're under that period after weaning when levels can drop quite quickly until they're establishing their feed intake again. It's very important to supplement higher levels to the sow and lactation, so that they're getting higher levels and storing more after consuming colostrum and milk from the sow. The importance of supplementation to the sow, in the case of vitamin E is also extremely important as well as sometimes, in certain cases when that's occurring increasing levels of supplementation, in the first diets after weaning.