DTX isn’t just for dairy cows! In this episode, we explore the research on DTX and its impact on growth performance, nutrient digestibility, and gut health in weanling pigs—even in the absence of mycotoxins. Learn how DTX supports GI microbial balance, enhances intestinal morphology, and delivers measurable results. DTX isn’t just for dairy cows—it’s a game-changer for swine health and performance too! If you would like to learn more, connect with us at [email protected]
🎧 Listen now to set your herd up for lifelong success!
Scott Zehr
All right. Hey, welcome everybody back to Ruminate This with Agrarian Solutions. I’m your host, Scott Zehr. And today we are going to be talking with our Vice President of Nutrition, Dr. Larry Roth. And Larry, but we’re actually going to be focusing on something other than ruminants today. Correct?
Dr. Larry Roth
Correct.
Scott Zehr
All right. So about a month ago, if you’ve been following along on our podcast, we talked to Cody Cline, who’s our international account manager. And he shared with us that you know, internationally, especially on our Asian markets, we predominantly, our predominant market over there is in swine.
And so recently here in June Dr. John Durr that had been with Agrarian for a number of years, was able to publish the results of a swine trial that was conducted. And I’ve invited Dr. Roth to Ruminate This platform today to share with us the findings of that study.
So with that, Larry I know for our podcast audience, you don’t get to see the slideshow that Larry’s going to show. Click the YouTube link, go over to YouTube, and you can see him go through that presentation. And with that, I’m going to turn this over to Larry for some information on our swine data.
Dr. Larry Roth
Hey, thanks, Scott. I look forward to talking today about this weanling pig study. It was actually done in Thailand, and it was published this year in a scientific journal called Animals.
And on the screen, the listeners, can see the reference to it. Or if they contact us, we would be glad to send them the peer reviewed article. So Scott, this is a completely randomized design. It used 120 newly weaned pigs that were three weeks of age. They were a out of a Duroc boars and the sows were land race, large white crosses.
Six replicates, five pigs per pen. Pens were one and a half meter by one and a half meter. Nippled waters and concrete feed bunk. This study went on for six weeks. So it’d be typical nursery type growth study. We had four treatments and there’s some interesting things here. So I’m going to spend a little bit of time talking about the treatments, Scott.
We had a control. It was the standard management practices plus Biofix plus. So there was a mycotoxin protection product even in the control. Now what’s interesting, Scott, in this study, they did not pick up significant mycotoxin levels in the feed. So really we’re looking at what happens when we do not have mycotoxin challenges.
So let’s keep that in mind as we go through the results here. So the control standard practices plus BioFix Plus at their recommended feeding rate. Then we had an antibiotic treatment, which was the control, which again included Biofix plus, plus CTC, colostin, and thiamulin. Now in the United States, we do not feed colostin or tiamulin to pigs, but in Thailand they did.
So we’ll make a few references to that as, we go on in the interpretation results. And then there was an enzyme treatment, which was the control, which again contained Biofix plus, plus some amylase, beta glucanase, protease, and xylanase. And in the refereed article, the levels of those four enzymes are listed.
And then we came to the treatment that we are perhaps the most interested in, and that’s DTX. And it was DTX plus the control. So let’s keep this in mind, Scott, that the DTX is at treatment, is actually DTX on top of BioFix Plus. Okay? So it would have been perhaps the best if it had been a straight head to head comparison, but now we’re looking at benefits that we get on top of BioFix Plus and we’ll be able to make some references from all of that.
Pigs were in an environment where they tried to keep the temperature in the 85 to 90 range, but being Thailand, it was quite often warmer than that, 60 to 70 percent humidity. So we probably would have had a little bit of heat stress going on. They had side fans, so it wasn’t a tunnel ventilated barn.
They monitored ammonia and increased the ventilation anytime ammonia exceeded five parts per million. So trying to do that from a respiratory health standpoint. And again, as I said before, nipple drinkers in the concrete feeder box. Scott, let’s get into some results here. This is in kilograms, so we can make some transfers over to pounds.
But we see at week zero there was no differences between the treatments for starting weight. Now, on the far right hand column, we have P values, and that is a direct statistical contrast between the DTX treatment and the control treatment. Within each line, we have superscript, which are letters, and they indicate the differences within the treatment.
So, the p value is the direct contrast between DTX and control, and then we’re also evaluating differences between the treatments. Well, by week six, the greatest body, individual body weight growth DTX fed pigs. And again, remember, this was without significant mycotoxin levels. So at this point, we can stop for a second and say, is DTX doing something in addition to protecting the animal against mycotoxins? It would appear so.
And remember, this is on top of what BioFix Plus is doing. Well, interestingly, Scott, if you look across the line, the lowest body weight, individual body weight was with the BioFix Plus treatment. So, we can conclude that maybe BioFix Plus isn’t doing anything when we don’t have mycotoxin issues.
We go on to average daily gain, and as we might suspect, if we look at for the entire study. the greatest average daily gain came from the DTX treatment. And the lowest weight gain came from the BioFix Plus alone treatment. So we think about antibiotics. What do antibiotics do? Well, they control pathogens.
Scott Zehr
Yeah.
Dr. Larry Roth
They do that, but they also can have a restrictive ability on beneficial organisms. Beneficial organisms help to control pathogens, plus they can help enhance immune function and increase nutrient absorption. Well, if we’re feeding antibiotics, we might be reducing some of those beneficial bacteria and causing a shift toward antibiotic resistant organisms if fed for a long period of time, like in this study which was conducted for six weeks.
Enzymes gave some in between growth between the controls, the antibiotic, and the DTX group. Now let’s go down here and look at feed efficiency. Week two, week six, we didn’t pick up differences between the treatments. But if we look at the entire six week study, we see that the best feed efficiency was for the DTX group. 1.92 pounds of feed to put on a pound of gain.
Scott Zehr
That’s huge.
Dr. Larry Roth
So that was statistically different from the other treatments. And look at this, Scott, a P value of 0.0002 for DTX compared to the BioFix alone. Wow, Scott, we’re doing something here in the absence of mycotoxins that is having a positive impact on Wayne Lane pig, body weight gain and feed efficiency.
Now, at week 2 and at week 4, they euthanized one pig per pen to look at VFAs in the large intestine and also throughout the study, they were looking at fecal E. coli. We see that here on this screen and I term this as looking at intestinal health. Well, we had the highest level of VFAs at week two and week four in the DTX treatment.
So help me out, Scott. What’s going on here? If we have more VFAs being produced in the hindgut, that’s telling me we have the right balance of bacteria. If we had more pathogens in the hindgut, we’re not going to be getting the VFAs. And in fact VFA production would be reduced and that’s what we see is happening here.
Here’s how I look at it. If we don’t absorb nutrients in the small intestine, those nutrients flow on down to the hindgut, just like something would float down a river.
Scott Zehr
Right.
Dr. Larry Roth
So if we’re getting higher VFAs, that tells us we have a beneficial balance. If we had more nutrients ending up in the hindgut, we’d have more of the pathogens, especially on the antibiotic treatment because we’re creating antibiotic resistant pathogens over six weeks.
So I think that we can make some conclusions here that we’re starting to improve digestibility and the absorption of nutrients in the small intestine. Let’s think about that. We’ll come back to it in just a moment with looking at some of those results.
So here we’re looking at fecal E. coli. No difference at the start of the study. That’s not surprising because we just started the study. But when we come to week two, week four and week six, we see that the lowest E. coli levels were for the DTX and for the enzyme treatment. Well, we might think that because the antibiotics are supposed to control pathogens.
It seems that that’s going on. But interestingly, they didn’t look at Salmonella. And then look at these p values in the far right hand column. Wow. Significantly lower E. coli levels for DTX Vvrsus the biofix plus by itself. Significant at the 0. 0001 level. So why might this be? Well, again, I think it’s because we’re doing something to enhance the immune system.
Scott Zehr
I mean, at the end of the day, we’re a probiotic, right? So It’s going to be some benefit there. And is this kind of demonstrating that if you would quote unquote, probiotic effect of DTX?
Dr. Larry Roth
Yeah. I think so. Exactly. And then let’s go down here and let’s look at ileal digestibility. So again, they sacrificed one pig per pen, week two, week four. And with that, they were able to look at ileal digestibility. You know what the pig is consuming. Use chromic oxide as a digestive marker and then get some samples from the ileum at sacrifice time. Look at this. Numerically we had the highest gross energy and protein and essential amino acid values for the DTX.
Look at the far right hand column for p values comparing DTX to the control. Wow. Look at that. We’re significantly improving gross energy, crude protein, and essential amino acid digestibility. That’s the probiotic effect. It’s something Scott, we probably don’t spend enough time talking about. And again, this benefit was obtained in the absence of mycotoxins.
My question is, if mycotoxins have been present, how much better might this have been?
Scott Zehr
Right.
Dr. Larry Roth
Then we come to week four and we didn’t pick up differences between the treatments for gross energy digestibility, but we sure picked up differences for crude protein and total essential amino acid digestibility. So feed as good a feed as you can, Scott, and then use the DTX to help improve the utilization of that diet.
Scott Zehr
Absolutely.
Dr. Larry Roth
Here’s an interesting chart. There’s a whole bunch of numbers here. And what I did was I just did a snapshot from the PDF of the study, from the article, and pasted it into my PowerPoint. And kind of walk through it here week two, when pigs were sacrificed, they looked at intestinal morphology at the duodenum, the first part of the small intestine, jejunum, the middle part, and ileum at the end.
And probably the biggest differences that we came up with was villus height, that’s the VH, VD is circumference, and then VCR is the total volume of the billi. So what we picked up with was billus height at the duodenum, was a trend for DTX to outperform the control or biofix by its own. When we come down to the ileum, billis height was greater for the DTX as compared to the control.
And then at week four, so now we have more time for the DTX to be providing this benefits again, billis height is greater at the duodenum. It’s greater at the jejunum and greater at the ileum. And then we see some trends present for total volume of the billi to be greater when DTX is being fed versus the control.
So, we look at all of this, Scott, and I think we can say feeding DTX has a probiotic effect for improving intestinal morphology and increasing the utilization of the diet ending up in pigs that grow faster and are more feed efficient. And again, Scott, I know I keep repeating myself, remember this was in the absence of mycotoxins.
Scott Zehr
Yeah.
Dr. Larry Roth
This is saying that we have a benefit with DTX supplementation in addition to mycotoxin protection.
Scott Zehr
You know, we’ve, theorized, I’m going to say I came on board in 2020 and, you know, we’ve theorized that DTX is maybe a quote unquote two for one type of product. And Larry, I kind of feel like this information is confirming that theory that we’ve had your thoughts there.
Dr. Larry Roth
Right. Yeah, it’s saying that we do a little bit more than just mycotoxin protection. And we have theorized that our mycotoxin protection comes from defending the epithelial cells that line the small intestine. I think we can say that we’re doing things to help digestive lining health even in the absence of the mycotoxin.
Scott Zehr
So a question I have for you, Larry, and, obviously these are swine, monogastrics. But once you get past the stomach in a cow, we’re pretty much all the same, swine, poultry, cattle, humans. You know, we talk about leaky gut in cattle, which is degradation of that castle wall, as you like to say. Is this evidence that we’re helping repair that?
Dr. Larry Roth
Scott, your question was, do we help repair it?
Scott Zehr
Or prevent it, I should say.
Dr. Larry Roth
I’m gonna say that we’ve got some evidence here that we’re helping to prevent leaky gut. And I’m saying that because we had improved weight gain, improved feed efficiency, improved diet utilization, lower E. coli levels. My only hesitation is saying that we enhanced or reduced leaky gut is I don’t have the immune markers that are typically associated with determining the presence or absence of leaky gut.
Scott Zehr
And that’s, a great explanation. and I appreciate you taking that question because that was one that I just came up with. So I kind of put you on the spot. But I, think you’re right in the sense that there’s evidence that we’re doing something in that small intestine. And, you know, as you’ve said before, the perfect study has never been done. So maybe the next one we can look at, at the immune markers as well.
Dr. Larry Roth
Right. Yeah. I would say that, in response to your question, there’s evidence that we’re improving digestive tract health and indirect evidence that we’re reducing leaky gut.
Scott Zehr
Yeah.
Dr. Larry Roth
At the end of the day, Scott, if we want to make money in the pork business, we have to have pigs that gain faster, stay alive, and are more feed efficient. And that happened here.
Scott Zehr
Yeah, I think this is it’s interesting stuff. I think it’s very complimentary to the research we did on the cattle side with the dairy cows, where we looked at, you know, production and reproduction metrics.
And Larry, why did we see a milk response? Why did we see a reproductive response? Well, if a, cow is dealing with less inflammation she’s able to utilize nutrients better. She’s better able to partition those nutrients to making milk or getting pregnant and staying pregnant. This kind of, I feel like demonstrates how that happened and how we saw those results in those dairy cows.
Dr. Larry Roth
Yeah. The difference there being we had mycotoxins present.
Scott Zehr
Yeah. That’s a great point.
Dr. Larry Roth
And so here we start to see some evidence that we’re probably improving intestinal development and morphology in the presence of mycotoxins. Again, this is in the absence. The dairy study was in the presence. But we’re starting to understand that we have an effect on intestinal health and morphology.
Scott Zehr
That’s awesome.
Dr. Larry Roth
It transfers over to production benefits.
Scott Zehr
Yeah. Well, Dr. Roth, I, definitely appreciate you taking time out of the day today. You have challenged me to think about what I say on this podcast in the beginning of every episode where we’re here to discuss ruminant nutrition and the impacts of mycotoxins. And you know, with my conversation with, you today, I think maybe we need to rethink that statement.
Because I think this is some exciting research. And I’m happy to be part of this organization that’s, you know, not afraid to go out there and get the kind of research that’s needed in this space in particular. And I tip my hat to our team at Agrarian for making that happen. So with that, Dr. Roth any final words you want to add in?
Dr. Larry Roth
I think the significance of this study is that in the absence of mycotoxins, the DTX had a probiotic effect to improve intestinal morphology and health, resulting in improved production benefits with weanling pigs. Greater growth, improved feed efficiency. And once we get past the albumasum in ruminants, small intestine, large intestine structure and function is quite similar between ruminants and non ruminants.
Scott Zehr
Very good. Very good. Well, thank you again, Dr. Roth for taking time out of your day today to chat with us here on Ruminate This. Again, if you would like any of the information referenced in today’s call, namely the published paper, email us [email protected]. And we will make sure we get that over to you ASAP. Thank you everybody. Hope you have a great week and we’ll be talking again soon.
