Weaning pigs from 21 to 28 days of age is common among many commercial swine producers. The emergence of off-site nurseries is an increasingly popular attempt by producers to break the disease transfer between the sow and the litter. The use of highly digestible feeds for young swine has made weaning from 10 to 18 days popular. However, weaning early and/or weaning lightweight pigs poses several nutritional and management challenges.
The nutritional programs implemented for different weaning ages should reflect the animal's ability to digest the dietary feed components. It is therefore necessary to understand when to change from the more expensive starter diets to those less costly.
There are several physiological changes that occur in the digestive tract of the young pig from birth to eight weeks of age. The time of these changes will influence the decisions of what diets to feed. The transition in digestive enzyme development will therefore have a direct impact on the type of feedstuffs used in formulating starter pig diets.
Major challenges of the young weanling pig involve the environment, health, and nutritional conditions. An understanding of how each can affect the pig allows the swine producer to make wiser decisions in the nursery. To provide proper weaning conditions, pigs of a uniform weight should be fed together. Pig growth rate during the first weeks postweaning will affect their subsequent growth to market weight.