Still-born Fetal Pigs and How Nutrition Plays a Part

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Still-born Fetal Pigs and How Nutrition Plays a Part Kiera Lee Introduction This experiment looks into the cause of fetal pigs being still-born. “Pigs suffer up to 50% embryonic and fetal loss during gestation and exhibit the most severe naturally occurring intrauterine growth retardation among livestock species (Wu, Bazer, Burghardt, Johnson, Kim, Li, Satterfield, and Spencer).” Looking at outside sources we see that there is already a high rate of mortality among the pig species. The dissection of the fetal pig in the laboratory is important because pigs and humans have the same level of metabolism and have similar organs and systems. We looked into the nutrition of the fetus, and based on the size of the fetus itself and the weight several organs inside of the fetus, predicted that a lack of nutrition caused the fetus to be still born. We hypothesized that the because of the fetuses malnutrition it was still-born. Materials and Methods To complete this experiment we used preserved fetal pigs, which were obtained from pregnant pigs that were being slaughtered for food. We first examined our preserved pig externally. We measured the pig, using yarn, from its snout to its back hooves and compared that to 3 other fetal pigs, which were also still-born. Next we made and incision to the abdominal cavity, using a scalpel to expose the internal organs. After identifying all of the organs of the fetus’ body we started to remove the organ that we used for testing. The first we removed was the heart. We removed the heart using a scalpel and weighed the heart. We then compared the weight of our pig’s heart to three other fetal pigs. Second we removed the stomach, using a scalpel also. We weighed the stomach while it was still full and then we removed the contents of the stomach and weighed the stomach again. These numbers were also compared to the same three fetal

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