Offering dry food to piglets prior to weaning at 3 weeks of age is a common commercial practice. Although it familiarises animals to dry food there is little quantitative information on the effects of the amount of food eaten on the young pigs' ability to utilise nutrients in the post-weaning period. In this preliminary study we compared the digestive utilisation of two diets (Table 1) based on either skimmed milk powder (diet M) or soya bean meal (diet S). Variations in pre-weaning food intake between individuals were imposed by the use of gavage feeding. No other supplementary food was offered before weaning.