Think age before weight.

Because feeding the right nutrition at the right time gets more, healthier pigs to market.

Learn about Nurture™ a young pig program that adapts to their changing needs.

The right nutrition at the right time is the age-approach to diet formulation. At Cargill, we integrate nutrition expertise, a focus on age and industry-leading technology to help you get more live, healthier pigs through the nursery phase.

Although our industry has seen amazing improvements in sow productivity and litter size, wean-to-finish death loss rates reach as high as 10 percent¹. There's even greater need to support young pig development, starting at weaning. Cargill's Nurture program can help.

Digestive Enzyme Development

During the dynamic period between seven and 35 days of age, diets need to be selected to match the pig's changing needs and to keep costs in balance. Weaning age and weight of the pig influence which diets are optimum after weaning. 

Nutrient Sources

Nutrient-dense ingredients, such as plasma proteins and lactose, are important to help 14-day to 28-day old pigs make the transition from mother's milk to dry feed. 

Pigs On the Nurture Program Show Improvement 

When compared to other feeding programs in a compilation of trials, pigs coming out of the nursery that were fed Nurture showed an improvement in many growth factors: 

• 3.1% increase in average daily gain
• 2.2% greater feed conversion
• 1.2-pound heavier coming out of the nursery
• $1.43 return over feed cost

Denny and Julie Russchers and their three sons, Jeff, Jeremy, and Louis, are operators of Precision Pork in Zeeland, Michigan. They own 2,800 sows and roughly market 90,000 pigs per year and have used Cargill's Nurture line since it was released nearly four years ago. They have consistently weaned heavier, more uniform piglets since utilizing the Nurture line and their overall operation has benefited from it. "Heavier piglets create exponential growth throughout their lives, yielding a better performing finisher pig at market," Denny says.

We take pride in knowing that our young animal nutrition program helps producers like the Russchers maximize performance in their nursery and set pigs up better for the finishing phase.

 

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