Urinary oestrone concentration in relation to piglet viability,growth and mortality

This experiment was conducted to study the relationship of oestrone excretion during late pregnancy to piglet viability, growth and mortality. Oestrone production was quantified by a radioimmunoassay of daily samples for urinary oestrone (UE) and expressed as a ratio of UE to urinary creatinine (UC). Following parturition and estimation of piglet viability (time from birth to suckling) six litters and their dams were divided into a high and low viability group for further analysis. The average birth to suckling interval for litters judged to have low viability was 96 ± 12 min and for those with high viability 42 ± 4 min. The dams of litters with high viability excreted > 2100 μg UE/g UC during the final 4 days of gestation, whereas the dams of the litters with low viability excreted < 1800 μg UE/g UC during the same period.Ten percent of the piglets produced by gilts who excreted < 1800 UE were stillborn, whereas a stillbirth was not observed in the litters from gilts excreting > 2100 UE. It was concluded that the data from this preliminary study would suggest that further research be conducted with regard to the association between UE and piglet losses pre- and postpartum.