Maternal responses to daily maternal porcine somatotropin injections during early-mid pregnancy or early-late pregnancy in sows and gilts.

Piglet neonatal survival and postnatal growth and efficiency are positively related to birth weight. In gilts, daily maternal porcine ST (pST) injections from d 25 to 100 (term approximately 115 d), but not d 25 to 50, of pregnancy increase progeny birth weight. Daily maternal pST injections from d 25 to 50 increase fetal weight at d 50 in gilts and sows. We therefore hypothesized that daily pST injections from d 25 to 100, but not d 25 to 50, of pregnancy would increase birth weight similarly in both parities. Landrace x Large White gilts and sows were uninjected (controls) or were injected daily with pST (gilts: 2.5 mg/d; sows: 4.0 mg/d, each approximately 15 microg of pST/kg per day) from d 25 to 50 or 100 of pregnancy. Litter size and BW were recorded at birth, midlactation, and weaning. Dams were followed through the subsequent mating and pregnancy. Maternal pST injections from d 25 to 100, but not d 25 to 50, increased mean piglet birth weight by 11.6% in sows (P <or= 0.001) and by 5.6% in gilts (P = 0.008). Both pST treatments decreased litter size by approximately 0.6 live-born piglets (each P <or= 0.025). In sows, maternal pST treatment from d 25 to 100 increased culls at weaning (P = 0.037). In remated dams, prior treatments did not affect (P > 0.1) the weaning-remating interval, conception rate, or subsequent litter size. Greater pST-induced birth weight increases in sows than in gilts may mean that underlying metabolic or placental mechanisms for pST action are constrained by maternal competition for nutrients in rapidly growing gilts.