Dietary Yucca schidigera Extract Supplementation During Late Gestating and Lactating Sows Improves Animal Performance, Nutrient Digestibility, and Manure Ammonia Emission.

Fang Chen,Caichi Wu,Pengwei Zhu,Yantao Lv,Wutai Guan,Chang Cui,Jun Chen,Shihai Zhang

doi:10.3389/fvets.2021.676324

Abstract

This study was conducted to investigate the effect of dietary Yucca schidigera extract (YSE) supplementation to sow performance, nutrients digestibility and ammonia emission of manure. Total 80 sows were randomly divided into 4 groups and fed with either control, control + 0.06% YSE, control + 0.12% YSE or control + 0.24% YSE diet from day 80 of gestation to day 21 of lactation. The results showed that dietary YSE supplementation resulted in trends toward a reduced number of stillbirth piglets (P = 0.08), weak piglets (P = 0.06), pre-weanling mortality (P = 0.04) and diarrhea (P = 0.03), and improved apparent digestibility of dry matter (P = 0.04). Besides, YSE supplementation significantly increased catalase activity (P = 0.02) while decreasing malonaldehyde levels (P = 0.04) in sow blood. Furthermore, the loss of total nitrogen, urea nitrogen and ammonia nitrogen in sow manure were significantly reduced with supplementation of YSE. In summary, supplementation of YSE in sow diet during late gestation and lactation could improve sow and litter performance, nutrient digestibility, and reduce nitrogen loss in sow manure during storage.

Highlights

Ammonia emissions from animal facilities are frequently the subject of odor complaints and public concern due to the possibility of their negative health effects in both humans and animals
Pre-weanling mortality were reduced from 7.78% in the control group to 2.86% in the groups with 0.06% Yucca schidigera extract (YSE) supplementation without changes in average daily gain (ADG) during lactation
The conversion from organic nitrogenous materials to ammonia is an enzymatic reaction, in which urease plays an important role as the limiting enzyme for the last step and ammonia nitrogen is included as key intermediate product [48, 49]

Summary

Introduction

Ammonia emissions from animal facilities are frequently the subject of odor complaints and public concern due to the possibility of their negative health effects in both humans and animals. It is very important to develop efficient strategies to reduce NH3 emissions from livestock manure. Yucca plant extracts have been widely used as natural additives in the food and livestock industries [4]. Yucca schidigera extract (YSE) has been shown to improve livestock and poultry performance, including weight gain, feed efficiency and health [5,6,7], and reduce ammonia emissions from animal manure and control odor in animal facilities as well [8,9,10]

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion