Heat stress (HS) is a major environmental stressor primarily affecting swine performance through negative effects on intestinal health. Zinc and butyric acid supplementation help maintain intestinal integrity and barrier function, and has been shown to be beneficial to swine during stress conditions. We tested a novel formulation of zinc butyrate (ZnB) to study whether it has protective effects toward swine using pig intestinal epithelial cells (IPEC-J2) and in a grower swine HS trial. IPEC-J2 cells were grown either under an inflammatory challenge (Escherichia coli lipopolysaccharide) or HS (41.5 °C for 48 h) using Transwell plates. The tight junction integrity of the cells under various treatments, including ZnB, zinc sulfate, and calcium butyrate, was followed over a period of 36 to 48 h by measuring transepithelial electrical resistance (TER). During inflammatory challenge, ZnB-treated cells had the greatest TER (P < 0.05) at 36 h. When the cells were exposed to HS at 41.5 °C, ZnB-treated cells had similar TER to the cells incubated at 37.0 °C, indicating significant protection against HS. In the swine trial (two dietary treatments, control and an encapsulated form of 40% zinc butyrate [E-ZnB] in hydrogenated palm oil pearls, 12 pigs per treatment), grower gilts (35 ± 1 kg) were supplemented with E-ZnB for 24 d before being subjected to biphasic HS for 7 d, 30 to 32 °C for 8 h and 28 °C for 16 h, for a total duration of 56 h of HS. At the end of the HS phase, half the pigs were euthanized from each treatment (n = 6 per treatment), and growth performance was calculated. During the HS phase, average daily gain (ADG; 0.53 vs. 0.79 kg) and gain-to-feed ratio (G:F; 0.33 vs. 0.43) were greater in the E-ZnB group (P < 0.05). Although in vivo intestinal permeability increased during the HS phase (P < 0.05), no differences were observed in the present study for the intestinal health parameters measured including TER, villus height:crypt depth ratio, and in vivo and ex vivo intestinal permeability between the two treatment groups. In conclusion, results presented here demonstrate that E-ZnB supplementation during HS improves ADG and G:F in grower pigs. Although we could not measure any differences, the mode of action of butyric acid and zinc suggests that the performance improvements are related to improved intestinal health.

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