Many farmers across Northern Ireland are turning to local animal health manufacturers Provita Protect POM-VPS to help reduce calf scour.
Calf scour stubbornly remains the number one cause of death in calves under 1 month of age. Along with good management and good hygiene Provita Protect will help reduce calve scour. Beds must be dry and draft free, they should pass the knee drop test, i.e. knee should still be dry after you drop down onto the straw bed. Calves should be fed enough colostrum as soon as possible after birth, ideally 2 litres within the first 15 minutes after birth, plus a further 2 litres 2 hours later. Care must be taken when freezing and thawing out colostrum as harmful bacteria can grow to very high levels if it’s left lying around for more than 1 hour. Equally thawing out at too high a temperature will destroy the proteins, if thawing out too slowly this can create very high levels of harmful bacteria in the colostrum. It is best fed fresh or stored in a fridge and used within a few days. Alternatively a powdered colostrum substitute can be used such as Provita colostrum concentrate, it will work through several modes of action including energy, probiotic, egg powder, natural colostrum, minerals and vitamins.
For herd owners looking to use something that can reduce scours naturally and has its benefits proven through licensed data, Provita Protect is becoming an ever more widely used product. With the industry under pressure to reduce antibiotic usage Provita Protect is a natural safe proven alternative. Vaccines do offer narrow high level protection where particular pathogens have been identified. However Protect has a broad spectrum protection against all types of pathogens. This was demonstrated on clinical farm trials, farm tests and in lab conditions.
One Co. Tyrone Dairy farmer running 120 cows used it last year from the start of calving. “We were having problems with calf scour and had tried lots of things without any great success. We improved our calf management and used Protect. Scours went from around 40 cases to 10 per year. Any that did take scour were much easier to treat. I will be using it in future.”
“Interestingly this is a similar level of reduction seen in the clinical farm studies done for the licensing, where an 83% reduction in calf scour was observed. Also there was an average increase in growth rate of 31%” commented Tommy Armstrong from Provita, who recently visited the farm.
“It works best when all calves are done from the start of calving. Currently we have some early order discounts available through our local Provita stockists.”