Removing prophylactic antibiotics from pig feed: how does it affect their performance and health?

BMC Veterinary Research

Table 3 Associations between initial body weight (BW) and the percentage of parenteral administrations of antibiotics and mortality rate and between final body weight and the percentage of pigs per pen affected by tail lesions across all pigs included in the study regardless of treatment

Variables	Initial BW¹	P-value	Final BW²	P-value
Variables	R^*		R^*
Weaner stage
Parenteral administrations %^a	- 0.61	0.036
Mortality rate %^b	- 0.56	0.056
Tail lesions %^c			0.33	0.297
Finisher stage
Parenteral administrations %^a	- 0.54	0.002
Mortality rate %^b	- 0.17	0.384
Tail lesions %^c			- 0.52	0.018

^*Correlation coefficients
¹Body weight (kg) of pigs when moving to weaner and finisher stages
²Body weight (kg) of pigs at the end of the weaner and finisher stages
^aPercentage of the animals treated based on the number of parenteral administrations (in doses) recorded when pigs were considered sick and/or lame during weaner and finisher stages
^bPercentage of pigs that died during weaner and finisher stages
^cPercentage of pigs per pen affected by tail lesions during weaner and finisher stages

ISSN: 1746-6148