Swine Nutrition Blackbelt #8 - What benefits do additional functional amino acids provide to nursery pigs?

Disease challenges are a very common problem farms have with nursery pigs due to the still developing immune system of the pigs at this age. There are many different methods to help increase herd health and maintain growth rates during infection. In this episode Dr. Dan Columbus and I discuss two of his recent studies where they fed increased levels of functional amino acids to nursery pigs to try and mitigate the negative effects of a salmonella infection.

Meet the guest: Meet the guest: Dr. Daniel Columbus is a Research Scientist in Nutrition at Prairie Swine Centre and Adjunct Professor in the Department of Animal and Poultry Science at the University of Saskatchewan. Dr. Columbus completed his BSc, MSc, and PhD from the University of Guelph in 2004, 2008, and 2012, respectively. He then completed a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the USDA/ARS Children’s Nutrition Research Center at Baylor College of Medicine. He joined the Prairie Swine Centre in 2015 and became Research Scientist in 2016. Dr. Columbus’ research focuses on the interaction of nutrition and health and nutrient utilization in swine and he has secured more than $4 million in research funding as PI and Co-I. His research is supported by NSERC, the Government of Saskatchewan, Alberta Agriculture and Forestry, and Swine Innovation Porc – Canadian Agricultural Partnership, among other agencies and industry sponsors. He recently served as Western Director for the Canadian Society of Animal Science and is an Associate Editor for the Canadian Journal of Animal Science. He has published 29 peer-reviewed scientific publications, 70 conference abstracts, and 19 industry publications and has given 23 presentations and interviews. He was the 2019 recipient of the Canadian Society of Animal Science Young Scientist Award.