Club Secretary of Spa YFC happy with Provita products

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Hannah Shaw, Club Secretary of Spa YFC was recently selected for a YFCU Exchange in Norway. Provita sponsored her t-shirts for the trip.

Hannah has bought and reared her own calves for the past four years on the family farm, whose overall work ethic is to ensure that their animals are as healthy and thriving as well as possible. Part of the farm’s animal health programme is to use Provita Protect for newly born or bought-in calves. Provita Protect is the only medicinally licensed probiotic (POM-VPS) for the prevention of calf scour. Calves fed milk replacer also get Provita WD Ruminant feed additive to boost the rumen development to further prevent any upsets and use the milk nutrients efficiently to help thrift. Hannah and the Shaw family use Provita Promist to fog sheds when cattle groups are housed over the autumn period. The results were very noticeable in 2017 when mixing various batches of cattle in the same air space as no groups developed acute coughs or any respiratory distress upon housing.  The respiratory health in bought-in calves has been greatly improved with use of Provita Promist and they will continue to use it as best practice during 2018. The Shaw family have recently started using Provita Combat hoof and wound spray after they dehorn calves. This protects the wound from infection, helps it to heal quickly and seals it nicely to stop any bleeds when calves accidentally hit that area.

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ProVitaMin: Tried and Tested by farmers across Northern Ireland

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Farmers across Northern Ireland continue to trust ProVitaMin to help correct deficiencies, improve fertility and growth rates amongst their flocks.

Paddy and Michael Mullan run the family farm Drimhill, near Swatragh which sits 1000 feet above sea level. Their farm consists of 350 ewes, consisting of 300 purebred Lanark Blackfaced ewes, 40 crossbred mules and 10 purebred Leister ewes, and 30 suckler cows.

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Controlling Lameness in Sheep during the summer

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Lameness is a major health and welfare problem in the UK. A study by Professor Laura Green, at the University of Warwick calculated that lameness cost UK farmers between £70M and £210M annually.* During summer months lameness problems can be higher due to higher stocking rates, longer grass and damp conditions.

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Advance+ for wholecrop, it is not just for grass!

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Co Armagh milk producer and beef farmer Dean Wright will grow approximately 40-45 acres of wholecrop each year. The main purpose of this crop is to utilise the reseeded sward the following years, but in saying that, the wholecrop silage is maximised fully, like everything on this farm.

‘I have always found wholecrop to be a good yielding, healthy crop; with plenty of energy and very useful for balancing feed rations.’ The wholecrop is fed to all groups on the farm with Dean pointing out, ‘it is great feeding for beef cattle.’

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Advance+ Silage inoculant – the perfect choice for Northern Ireland

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At this time of year farmers are bombarded with information on silage inoculants. With so much variation between years and cuts, it’s very difficult to compare silage inoculants or even treated verses untreated crops. Many products claim to be better than the next one, so how can they actually be compared?

 

It is advisable to check the bacterial strains are EU approved.  The EU registration system has standard parameters to measure efficacy such as dry matter losses, pH, lactic acid and ammonia plus stability for wholecrop and maize silages.  Parameter testing shows efficacy on easy, moderate and difficult to ensile crops. Some of the inoculants, in particular the ones that only apply 100,000 bacteria per g of grass, failed to show a benefit in moderate and difficult to ensile crops.

 

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