Herbal extracts and symbiotic mixture replacing antibiotics in piglets at the initial phase

Abstract

The objective of this work was to evaluate the use of vegetable extract based addictives associated or not to symbiotics as an alternative for antibiotic as growth promoters for piglets at initial phase. It was used 125 pigs of commercial genetic line with initial weight of 7.4 ± 1.1 kg, weaned at 20 days of age, during 50 days. The experimental design used was randomized blocks (initial weight), with five treatments and five replicates with five animals per experimental unit. The experimental diets were a basal diet, without additive, and other four diets, one diet containing antibiotic (colistin + zinc oxide); diet with 0.3% of a symbiotic mixture; diet with 0.3% of a symbiotic mixture plus 0.05% of herbal mix (plant extracts and microencapsulated essential oils); and another diet with 0.3% of symbiotic mixture plus 0.1% of herbal mixture. It was observed that the use of the symbiotic mixture associated to 0.05% of herbal mixture showed positive results, similar to the ones obtained with diets containing antibiotics for the final weight, average weight gain, average daily feed intake and pH of stomach and diarrhea incidence. The use of symbiotics promoted smaller vilous:depth crypt ratio, except when associated to 0.1% of herbal mixture, which was similar to the diet without addictives. There was no differences in the feed conversion, coliform and lactobacillus count in the jejune and in the cecum and in the pH of cecum. The use of herbal mixture associated to symbiotic is a viable alternative for replacing the use of antibiotics as growth promoters for piglets in the initial phase. However, the concentration of the herbal mixture is an important factor to be considered.