Palatability: why is that so important?

During lactation, maintaining adequate sow intake is crucial to meet nutritional needs, ensure milk production and promote healthy profile growth, especially in conditions of heat stress that tend to reduce sows' appetite. Several strategies were explored in order to face this challenge, including improvements in facility ventilation, increasing nutrients in the diet and including palatability enhancers in the feed through sensory additives.

Palatability plays a fundamental role in food consumption, not only stimulating the intake of sows, but also influencing the ease of initial feed for piglets, due to previous exposure to these palatability enhancers during suckling, a phenomenon known as sensory impression.

A recent study demonstrated that the use of a combination of flavors resulted in a significant increase in daily feed intake and pig milk production. Furthermore, the piglets had a higher body weight at weaning and a better growth performance, which highlighted the importance of flavors/aromas as outstanding allies for the performance of both sows and their piglets, with the aspect of sensory imprinting amplifying these benefits.

Recent communications suggest that, even in sow herds with very high feed intake, KRAVE is changing sow feeding behavior - sows go to feed quicker and consume their allotted feed faster.

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