Long-term effect of the administration of two doses of formic acid on the intestinal microbiota profile of growing pigs. MicroFormic

Thirty-four post-weaned pigs (35 day of age, of an average body weight of 7081.78 ± 956.23 g) were individually reared in cages. Based on litter and body weight, pigs were assigned to one of the three experimental diets. The diets were based on the same basal diet (C), without antibiotic supplementation, and supplemented with 1.4 kg/ton (L) and 6.4 kg/ton (H) of Ca-formate respectively. Pigs were fed with the experimental diets for 6 week and then slaughtered. Samples composed on scraped mucosa and digesta content was obtained from mid-jejunum and immediately frozen in liquid nitrogen. Total bacterial DNA was extracted using Qiamp Stool Mini Kit (Qiagen). The library formation and sequencing of 16S rRNA gene were performed with MiSeq® Reagent Kit V3-V4 on MiSeq-Illumina® platform. The letters “C”, “L” and ”H” in samples name indicate the three different diets, respectively.