Bioscientifica Proceedings

Studies of low birth weight offspring have a long history in pig science. These pigs have reduced growth potential and poor carcass quality compared to their higher birth weight littermates. In contemporary commercial sows with between 10 and 15 total pigs born/litter, between-litter differences in average birth weight appear to make the largest contribution to variation in postnatal growth performance, independent of numbers born. Low birth weight is a characteristic of...

The incidence of prematurity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease have been increasing in both the developed and developing world. Increasing numbers of human studies suggest that these serious health outcomes may have developmental origins originating from nutritional deficits in the periconceptional period, with maternal nutrition around the time of conception now shown to have important effects on the length of gestation, trajectory of fetal growth and on postnatal growth a...