Physiological aspects of compensatory growth in pigs

Abstract

Compensatory growth is a specific type of growth exhibited by animals, which were previously exposed to nutritional restriction. This restriction could be induced by feed quantity and quality consumed by animal. When feed and nutrients supply again become abundant (realimentation period) growth rate of these animals accelerates and exceeds this achieved by comparable animals fed well and continuously. Animal's homeostatic mechanism, which responds to an increase both amount of feed available during realimentation as well as its quality is biologically complicated. During this time a lot of changes occur in: voluntary feed intake, partitioning of energy and protein in daily gain, protein turnover, body metabolism and endocrine state as well. Recognizing of these events allow precisely described a place of organism where compensatory growth occurs as well as to understand role of these processes in mechanism of compensatory growth.