Table 6.

Post-absorptive plasma sulfur-containing metabolite concentrations (µmol/L) of primiparous sows ¹.

	Dietary Treatment 1				SEM 2	p-Value 3
Item	0.29		0.92
	Farrow	Wean	Farrow	Wean		Diet	Stage	Diet × Stage
Homocysteine	25.34	12.28	23.82	13.16	0.88	0.711	<0.001	0.219
Cysteinyl–glycine	23.16	12.40	21.46	13.58	0.91	0.790	<0.001	0.084
Glutathione	1.406	0.397	1.813	0.452	0.65	0.741	0.098	0.791
Methionine	45.01	34.34	54.02	46.18	7.53	0.169	0.242	0.856
Cysteine	24.73	16.31	17.55	34.40	8.77	0.533	0.642	0.170
Taurine	107.6 b	39.60 c	155.8 a	36.60 c	7.31	0.002	<0.001	0.003

¹ Experimental diets were fed between gestation day 90 and farrowing. Dietary treatments were as follows: 0.29% and 0.92% standardized ileal digestible sulfur AAs, which correspond to 63 or 200% of the estimated SID SAAs requirement for primiparous sows in late gestation (requirements from d 90 to d 114 of gestation, 145 kg of body weight at breeding, expected litter size of 15, and piglet birth weight of 1.35 kg). A common lactation diet was provided from farrowing through to weaning (23 ± 5 days of lactation). Blood samples were collected during the post-absorptive stage, 15 h after the last meal. ² Maximum value for the standard error of the means. ³ p-values for the two-way ANOVA procedure between dietary treatment (0.29 vs. 0.92% standardized ileal digestible sulfur AAs,%), stage (farrowing and weaning), and the interaction. ^a,b,c means with different superscripts are statistically different within the stage.