Dietary ascorbic acid for neonatal pigs reared artificially.

During the first 21 d of feeding a casein-glucose liquid diet the performance of pigs weaned at 1-3 d of age was not affected by ascorbic acid (AA) added at levels ranging from 165 to 990 ppm in two experiments. However, AA tended to improve growth rate from d 22 to 36 in experiments where pigs were fed a dry diet, but not when fed the diet in liquid form. The concentrations of AA in plasma, spleen and small intestinal tissues increased linearly with increasing dietary AA. No evidence of variability of AA concentration in adrenals was observed, whereas its content in the liver was increased only at 990 ppm AA. The AA concentrations in the small intestinal tissue increased progressively from the duodenum, jejunum to the ileum, mainly due to the increase in AA in the mucosal compared with the serosal layer. Dietary AA had no effect on the blood hematocrit, hemoglobin or on the concentrations of glucose or urea-N in plasma and protein in organs and intestinal tissues.