摘要Background Weaning stress reduces growth performance and health of young pigs due in part to an abrupt change in diets from highly digestible milk to fibrous plant-based feedstuffs.This study investigated whether dietary galactoo-ligosaccharide(GOS),supplemented both pre-and post-weaning,could improve growth performance and intestinal health via alterations in the hindgut microbial community.Methods Using a 3×2 factorial design,during farrowing 288 piglets from 24 litters received either no creep feed(FC),creep without GOS(FG-)or creep with 5％GOS(FG+)followed by a phase 1 nursery diet without(NG-)or with 3.8％GOS(NG+).Pigs were sampled pre-(D22)and post-weaning(D31)to assess intestinal measures.Results Creep fed pigs grew 19％faster than controls(P＜0.01)prior to weaning,and by the end of the nursery phase(D58),pigs fed GOS pre-farrowing(FG+)were 1.85 kg heavier than controls(P＜0.05).Furthermore,pigs fed GOS in phase 1 of the nursery grew 34％faster(P＜0.04),with greater feed intake and efficiency.Cecal microbial com-munities clustered distinctly in pre-vs.post-weaned pigs,based on principal coordinate analysis(P＜0.01).No effects of GOS were detected pre-weaning,but gruel creep feeding increased Chao1 α-diversity and altered several genera in the cecal microbiota(P＜0.05).Post-weaning,GOS supplementation increased some genera such as Fusicateni-bacterand Collinsella,whereas others decreased such as Campylobacter and Frisingicoccus(P＜0.05).Changes were accompanied by higher molar proportions of butyrate in the cecum of GOS-fed pigs(P＜0.05).Conclusions Gruel creep feeding effectively improves suckling pig growth regardless of GOS treatment.When sup-plemented post-weaning,prebiotic GOS improves piglet growth performance associated with changes in hindgut microbial composition.