18 July 2022

2 minute read

By: Kyle Baldwin

Dr. Morgan Thayer, Swine Technical Services Manager with ADM Animal Nutrition, spoke to The Pig Site’s Sarah Mikesell at the 2022 World Pork Expo held in Des Moines, Iowa, USA. Dr. Thayer discussed her academic and career experiences with ADM and recent research she has conducted with CitriStim, ADM's yeast product.

Thayer's journey at ADM

“I've been with ADM for about a year in the swine technical services space, and before that I had two opportunities to work for ADM through internships. One during my undergrad where I was focused on sales, but then another during my PhD while I was a student at Purdue University. I worked on research as well as some business aspects of the company,” Dr. Thayer said. “I've had the opportunity to work for ADM three different times now, and I'm glad to say and that I've landed here permanently after graduate school."

Working with ADM, Dr. Thayer shared she has had the opportunity to continue research and present it at the Digestive Physiology of Pigs Conference in the Netherlands. She appreciated the opportunity to work with her research peers at ADM and share her research data with customers who can apply it on-farm.

CitriStim increases livability in pigs

“CitriStim is ADM’s proprietary, unique yeast product called Pichia guilliermondii. I've been able to do research during my PhD with the product, which is one of the new research studies that we've done. We've done two large commercial scale research studies with CitriStim feeding it to sows during gestation as well as lactation,” Dr. Thayer explains.

Through this research, she says that the results consistently showed that sows being fed CitriStim in gestation led to improvements in pigs born alive per litter. In addition, her research with CitriStim-fed sows looked at various other factors involved in piglet birth and survivability.

“One of the studies saw a decrease in the low birthweight pigs, which we all know is a great thing. Another study saw a decrease in the number of E. coli scours in the lactation crates after farrowing,” she said.

“We've also been able to do a carryover study where we followed pigs from sows fed CitriStim all the way through weaning to market,” Dr. Thayer mentioned. “We found that pigs from CitriStim-fed sows actually were heavier – had a heavier hot carcass weight at market – as well as increased livability in the nursery and through grow-finish of about 4%.”