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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2017
The nutritional impact of weaning may, to a large extent, be determined by the milk consumption of the piglets prior to weaning, as piglets suck their ‘home’ teat (Spinka et al., 1995). Since piglets possess a specific teat order and the production of milk from different teats on the same sow may differ by as much as 200% or more (Algers et al., 1990), different piglets within the same litter can be assumed to be affected differently by the nutritional change. This experiment was conducted in order to evaluate the influence of teat-order in pre- and post-weaning growth performance of piglets weaned at 3, 4 and 5 weeks of age.