Weaning is associated with a dramatic change in the nutritional status of young animals, and many neonates experience a lag in their normal trajectory of growth post-weaning because they have little experience of ingesting solid food. In the wild, animals are able to learn which foods are ‘safe’ through the mammary transfer of volatile flavours present in the maternal diet. This mechanism could be harnessed in a commercial environment by the use of flavour imprinting, a technique where a characteristic flavour is included both in the maternal and weanling's diet (for pilot data see Campbell, 1976). The use of this method could be associated with considerable increases in the profitability of animal production, however, the whole area is poorly understood. The objective of this experiment was to enhance our understanding of the effect of flavour imprinting on the acceptability of solid food, and hence our ability to predict the diet selection and food intake of newly weaned animals.