Application Of Plant Extracts In Pig Farming

Since the 1950s, various antibiotics have been widely added to feed as growth promoters. However, antibiotics or chemosynthetic drugs used in the feed will produce a certain amount of accumulation in the animal body. If the drug is not used according to the regulations and stopped, the accumulated drugs in the body cannot be discharged by the animal metabolism, thus causing harm to the human body by remaining in the livestock and poultry products. Secondly, the resistance of some drug-resistant bacteria to antibiotics can also affect the prevention and treatment of certain diseases in humans. With the deepening of the research, it was found that the active ingredient in certain plant extract can effectively kill pathogenic bacteria, antibiotics can replace parts of the feed, studies have shown that the disadvantages of natural plant extracts with no chemical synthetic drug, its active ingredients not only has antibacterial effect, but also has antiviral and antioxidant properties, and application in livestock and poultry can not only improve the production performance of animals, improve the young animal gut environment, enhance the animal immunity, also can improve the reproductive performance of female, therefore, plant extracts to replace antibiotics in pig production, the application of more and more get the attention of people.

Herbal Plant Extract

More than 100 medicinal plants are known to be used as feed additives, such as garlic, pepper, wormwood leaves, ginger, cinnamon, pepper, andrographis paniculata, Radix Isatidis, licorice, Atractylodes rhizome, Ophiopogon japonicus, etc. Chinese herbal medicine feed additive contains a variety of nutrients and bioactive substances, both nutrition and drug function, has the advantages of simple and inexpensive, multifunctional, non-toxic side effects, no drug resistance and so on. Studies have shown that in terms of antimicrobial activity, garlic extract has strong antibacterial ability, can effectively control piglet diarrhea, reduce mortality, significantly promote growth, and improve feed conversion rate. Slaughter test results showed that the addition of natural herbal extracts can significantly improve the carcass lean meat rate, reduce the carcass fat rate and back fat thickness, significantly increase the fat content between muscles, and increase the tenderness, juiciness and flavor of meat.

Plant Active Polysaccharides

Polysaccharide substance widely exist in plants, and the content is higher, the polysaccharide is not only the structure of plant cell material, is the main source of energy cells, also has the anti-tumor, anti-virus, fall blood sugar, anti-inflammatory, resistance to complement the action such as, similar to the nerve growth factor and other biological activities, can significantly reduce because in addition to the nutrition and serum amyloid peptide nerve apoptosis. It was found that adding active polysaccharides in the feed could significantly improve the production performance and immune function of early weaning piglets, promote the growth of animals, development of immune organs, antibody generation, activation of lymphocytes, and thus reduce the mortality rate.

Phytoestrogens

Soy flavones with weak estrogen-like activity can significantly increase the weight gain and feed utilization efficiency of male animals. It increases blood testosterone, D-endorphin, growth hormone, insulin-like growth factor-I, triiodothylamine, thyroxine and insulin levels, but reduces blood urea nitrogen and cholesterol levels, thereby promoting muscle protein deposition and accelerating muscle growth and development. Due to soybeans flavone E2 receptor in different degrees, such as the hypothalamus, pituitary, affect the growth of animal neuroendocrine system of shaft and axle, promote the growth of animal mammary gland and affect the endocrine activity, therefore widely used Yu Bi dairy cattle, in promoting the mammalian mammary gland development and related endocrine activities, affect the body's metabolic activity and milk composition showed good effect.

Pine and Cypress Extract

China is rich in pinaceae plant resources, masson pine alone has 20 million hectares, pine needles, pine bark, twig annual output of about 300 million tons. From pinaceae and cupressaceae wild plant extracted plant preparation powder particles, the main components include methyl isopropyl ring before diallyl, flavonoids, anthocyanins and catechins, a variety of unsaturated fatty acid, not only has good nutritional value, can be controlled by a large number of active substances to adjust immunity and metabolism, improve the level of animal health. Among them, alkenes, alkenes and flavones can obviously enhance the humoral and cellular immune function, promote the antigen antibody reaction and lymphocyte transformation. Volatile oils have the function of enhancing immunity and macrophage phagocytosis. Organic acid, tannin also have the action that promotes airframe immunity. The growth performance of growth finishing pigs can be improved by adding pine and cypress plant preparation powder into the feed.

Lichen Extract

Lichen is a symbiotic complex composed of fungi combined with algae or cyanobacteria. Most lichen symbiotic fungi are ascomycetes, while basidiomycetes are in the minority. Symbiotic lichen fungi can absorb water and inorganic salts to supply algae, so that it can maintain a certain humidity and get the raw materials needed for photosynthesis. The algae and cyanobacteria in the symbiont contain chlorophylls, which photosynthesize and feed lichens. In addition, in the comparative test, it was found that lichen extract had the same effect as the chemosynthetic preservative currently in use, and the limit of use was much higher than that of chemosynthetic preservative, with high safety and wide bacteriostasis, and the PH value between 5 and 7 had strong bacteriostasis effect. In the process of feed processing and storage, it is often contaminated by mold not only the nutritional value is reduced, but also the acute and chronic poisoning of livestock and poultry will be caused because some molds can produce different mycotoxins. Lichens not only contain preservative active ingredients, but also contain calcium, iron, polysaccharides and other nutritional factors. Therefore, the comprehensive development and utilization of lichen plant resources for feed additives can not only play a preservative role, but also improve the nutritional value of feed and reduce the cost, which has a good development and application prospect.