Swine Nutrition Blackbelt #18 - Decreasing piglet mortality - can extra zinc help?

Piglet mortality continues to be an issue for the swine industry and is one of the worst sources of economic losses in production facilities. Several studies have tried to identify new ways to decrease mortality to save producers money. In this episode, I talk with Kelsey Hammers about her study feeding zinc to sows at different timepoints during gestation to see how it affects piglet mortality. Take a few minutes out of your day to hear the results!

Meet the guest: Kelsey Hammers is a Ph.D. student at the University of Minnesota. She received her B.S. in Animal Sciences from the University of Missouri Columbia in 2018 and then attended Kansas State University to receive her M.S. in Swine Nutrition in 2020. Her research focuses on fetal programming strategies such as feeding higher levels of zinc to gestating sows to evaluate the effects on sow and piglet performance, the piglet gut microbiome, and differential gene expressions.