Effect of surgical or immune castration on postprandial nutrient profiles in male pigs

ABSTRACT

To avoid boar taint before slaughtering, late castration by immunisation against gonadotrophin releasing hormone or immunocastration has been developed. The current study aimed at determining whether differences in feed efficiency between castrated male (CM), immune castrated (IM) and entire male pigs (EM) can be explained by differences in nutrient plasma profiles after a meal. In this study, 24 male pigs (n = 8/type) were enrolled between 14 to 19 weeks of age. Entire and IM pigs ate less and were more feed efficient than CM pigs (p < 0.05). The postprandial plasma profiles of glucose, insulin, urea and amino acids (AA) were determined before (d –6), just after (d 8) and well after (d 16) the decrease in testicular hormones in IM pigs. For each test day, pigs were fasted overnight and subsequently fed a small meal (400 g). On d –6, postprandial profiles of plasma glucose of IM pigs did not differ from the two other types of pigs. On d 8, EM pigs had a greater average plasma glucose concentration than IM and CM pigs (p < 0.05) but the profiles did not differ. On d 16, the differences between profiles of glucose suggest a lower clearance of glucose in EM compared with IM and CM pigs. Plasma insulin did not significantly differ between the three types. Plasma urea profiles did not differ between CM, EM and IC pigs on d –6 whereas CM pigs showed higher plasma urea concentrations than EM and IM thereafter (p < 0.01). Among AA, Lys plasma concentrations were greater in CM than in EM and IM pigs on d –6, d 8 and d 16 (p < 0.05), whereas on d 16 plasma Hypro concentrations were lower in CM than in EM and IM pigs (p < 0.05). The finding that plasma glucose profiles were modified by immunocastration much faster and earlier than urea and AA profiles, suggest that the decrease in testicular hormones impacted energy metabolism more rapidly than protein metabolism.

KEYWORDS:

• Barrow
• boar
• castration
• energy metabolism
• immunocastration
• performance
• pigs
• protein metabolism

Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to Alain Chauvin and Francis Le Gouevec for animal care and surgery, and to Christine Tréfeu, Nathalie Bonhomme and Nadine Mézière for laboratory analyses.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Ethics approval

The experiment was performed in the INRA experimental facilities in Saint-Gilles (France) in compliance with the guidelines of the French Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries for animal experimentation and care and was approved by the Regional ethical committee (CREEA N°07).

Additional information

Funding

The work was funded by l’Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR) project ANDROPIG ANR- 09-BLAN-0083.