Aira Serviento

Aira Maye Serviento has more than 10 years of combined experience in the industry and research field of animal nutrition and physiology. She completed her PhD with INRAE and Lallemand with her research focused on growth, feeding and drinking behavior, energy metabolism, and thermoregulation of growing pigs under heat stress. Aira is originally from the Philippines where she finished her bachelor’s degree in agriculture and then worked as an animal feed formulator for pig, poultry, and aqua species. She pursued a double master’s degree in France and Hungary under the Erasmus Mundus Sustainable Animal Nutrition and Feeding program.

Aira is currently a postdoctoral researcher at ETH Zürich focusing on the effect of ambient temperature on different production and behavioral parameters of dairy cows.

Heat stress (HS) is a major limiting factor in pig production especially with increasing global temperatures. In growing pigs, HS reduces feed intake (FI) resulting to a reduced growth performance. The study aimed to determine if previously reported positive effects of live yeast (LY) supplementation in HS pigs were due to a modified feeding behaviour or energy metabolism, and if these can be replicated by imposing an increased meal frequency. The effect of LY supplementation [0 vs. 100 g/ton of feed], and of feeding window (FW) [unlimited or UNLI, 2FW of 1 hour each, and 8FW of 15 minutes each] were measured in finishing pigs. Ambient temperature was at 22°C for the first 5 days, then at HS conditions (28°C) for the next 5 days. Heat exposure decreased FI and retained energy (RE) of pigs (P<0.01). During HS, LY-supplemented UNLI pigs had decreased inter-meal intervals (P=0.02), attenuating HS effect on FI which tended to improve RE (P=0.09). In non-supplemented pigs, increasing meal frequency improved FI and RE, but not but protein deposition (PD). Supplemented pigs had higher PD during HS regardless of FW (P=0.03). Comparing the 2FW groups, improved heat tolerance of LY-supplemented pigs were due to improved insulin sensitivity (P<0.05) and latent heat loss capacity after a meal (P<0.05) allowing them to increase their FI (via an increased number of meals) and thus their energy efficiency. Imposing an increased meal frequency improved FI in HS pigs but did not replicate positive effects of LY on PD.