Keeping cattle healthy during winter housing

Air quality

Housing factors that lead to poor ventilation and stagnant air supply are often considered the primary reasons for high levels of pneumonia disease. Air space is just as crucial as floor area. Pneumonia is particularly common in housed animals but the disease can often be avoided if buildings are not overcrowded, are well ventilated and well drained, and animals of different age groups are not mixed.

A continual flow of fresh air throughout a shed is important, but it is also necessary to keep draughts to a minimum to prevent cattle from getting respiratory infections. Building design should allow hot air to rise and exit, drawing in fresh air. This prevents the hot air remaining in the house, raising the humidity level, and then condensing to water, creating a wet and damp environment on the bedding which allows bacteria to flourish.

In general, animals perform better in well ventilated sheds, as they are less likely to develop respiratory infections or pneumonia. Vaccination of calves and youngstock with pneumonia vaccines is a prerequisite, but vaccines can only reach their maximal effect if ventilation and air quality is optimum in the winter housing sheds. Vaccinations may take anywhere from five days to six weeks to become fully effective (depending on product used), so it is important to plan the housing date with this in mind. It is also important to vaccinate every animal in the herd.

Provita Promist is a unique air purifier containing a blend of natural organic acids, essential oils and wetting agents which together help control the levels of particulate matter, dust and reduce ammonia in the housing of intensively reared livestock. It can be used when new calves/cattle are introduced into houses, or during still weather conditions with stagnant airflow circulation, or until air flow improves in the shed.

Promist can also be used daily in houses that have permanently poor air flow. It should be used above and around the cattle and will purify the air, the surfaces, and the animals. Its herb content will provide an expectorant effect helping to expel organisms from the respiratory tract.

Farmers using Promist in the UK and Ireland have seen the following benefits:

• An immediate and significant improvement, resulting in only 5% of calves needing an antibiotic, compared to 50% before
• Improved calf vitality and health
• Cattle breathe easier, are healthier and thriving better. Vet bills are reduced with less callouts and antibiotics needed
• Another farmer said Promist is an integral part of their pneumonia prevention and is especially useful when mixing various batches of livestock.

Calf scour

Very significant advances have been made in clarifying the scientific mechanism of action of probiotics, with respect to their interactions with the gut microbiome, and on the development of immunity in the gut barrier itself.

These interesting new probiotic mechanisms are largely threefold:

• Effects within the gut on the microbiome
• Effects on the gut barrier itself, including sealing of tight junctions, increasing trans-epithelial electrical resistance (TEER), prevention of leaky gut syndrome, stimulation of local gut immunity and the release of natural antimicrobial substances such as, bacteriocins and more
• Immunological effects in the gut, release of chemical signalling agents leading to heightened immunity in the gut mucosal barrier, and in other organs such as the lungs.

Provita Protect is the only authorised, licensed and proven probiotic for calves on the UK and European market. It has been authorised for use in E. coli calf scour by the VMD on the basis of acceptance of its evidence-based field trial results, and its proven efficacy against E. coli scour in calves. In this regard, it is a unique probiotic.

Feedback from five farmers on using Protect reveal that outbreaks of scour have not arisen since they started using the product.

Probiotic effects in calf field trials

During clinical trials with Provita Protect the following results were documented in the Clinical Expert Report which was prepared for submission to the regulatory authorities, and which resulted in the successful registration and authorisation of the product.

Results from calf field trials for product registration for Provita Protect:

• 83% less incidence of calf scour
• 70% less incidence of calf respiratory disease
• 78% less incidence of scour and pneumonia
• +31% increase in average daily gain (ADG)
• +10% higher weights at weaning.

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