The modern hyper-prolific sow gives birth to 17 live-born piglets on average. An alternative strategy to nurse sows and artificial rearing may be providing milk replacer while letting all the piglets stay with their dam. However, milk replacer is of lower nutritional quality than sow milk and may reduce the body fat content of piglets who use milk replacer to compensate for low suckling success due to competition at the udder. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the body composition at weaning of two random sow-reared piglets per litter from 93 litters by using the deuterium oxide dilution technique. The piglets were part of large study with a 2×2×2 factorial design of either 14 or 17 piglets from day 1 (LS: LS14/LS17) with or without access to milk replacer (MILK: -MILK/+MILK) and reared by crated or loose-housed sows (HOUSING: CRATE/ LOOSE). From behavioral observations day 21 in +MILK, piglets were divided according to their frequency of drinking milk replacer and suckling (Nutrition Source). Increasing LS from 14 to 17 reduced the average daily gain from 258 to 228 g/d and body fat % from 14.4 to 12.7% (P0.1). In +MILK, the Nutrition Source affected piglet body composition (P
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