Yeast supplement offers financial benefit through improved lamb finishing times
13th June 2023
The yeast fermentation additive Celmanax has been shown by a recent study to increase daily liveweight gains and reduce finishing times in lambs that received supplementation, saving farmers £18.91 per head when feed cost was taken into account.
Rumevite Quality Lamb is a multipurpose supplement that allows sheep farmers to take advantage of increased average daily gain benefits achieved through Celmanax, a yeast fermentation additive, while also providing lambs with high levels of protein and essential vitamins and minerals.
Dr Alison Bond, nutritionist for Rumenco and UK distributor of Celmanax, highlighted that the primary factor contributing to increased profits was a significant rise in daily liveweight gains, resulting in faster finishing times.
In the trial, 50% of the lambs supplemented with Celmanax finished by the end of June, with an additional 35% reaching completion by the trial’s end. In contrast, only 8% of unsupplemented lambs finished in June, leaving 75% of the control group unfinished.
Dr Bond explained that Celmanax provided nutritional benefits, enabling lambs to achieve an average daily gain of 530g in the first four weeks of the trial. This was a 150g advantage compared to the control group’s average daily gain of 380g.
“Celmanax is a yeast fermentation additive that has been shown to improve ruminant performance by supporting a stable rumen environment. A range of compounds within this product supports the maintenance of a stable rumen microbiome, therefore improving digestibility and feed efficiency,” she said.
The trial, conducted from 15th May to 25th July 2022, involved over 650 10-week-old lambs on a commercial sheep farm in Wales. The lambs had negative worm counts, were managed on paddocks with a sward height of 9cm (2,500 kg DM/ha), and had access to a Rumenco mineral bucket.
Both groups received creep feed, with the control group fed standard creep feed and the treatment group receiving creep feed containing Celmanax at a rate of 0.5g/h/d.
According to Dr Bond, the financial return of feeding Celmanax was achieved through a combination of fewer days on farm and the lambs earning a higher price by hitting the market early.
“If you look back through market trends, lamb price will be strong throughout June and then start to decline as you get into July and August. This is because the majority of lambs are finishing in the July-August period, flooding the market and driving down prices,” she pointed out.
In June 2022, the average deadweight lamb price was 671.73 p/kg, which dropped to 636.35 p/kg in July and further declined to 544.90 p/kg in August.
Dr Bond added that faster finishing times also equate to fewer resources being used for each lamb, such as water, grass, and labour, which was not factored into the financial calculations of the trial. Nevertheless, industry data suggests Celmanax supplementation reduced enteric methane emissions in the trial period by 18.7% compared to the control group.
Options for supplementing yeast fermentation products
Sheep farmers wanting to leverage the benefits of Celmanax have a couple of feeding options, Dr Bond said. They can choose to feed it in a creep feed compound like the trial farm, in which case the recommended feeding rate is be 0.5g/h/day to be fed from weaning through to finish.
The second option is to supplement lambs from weaning through to finish with a multipurpose product like Rumevite Quality Lamb, which replaces concentrates. Good frame growth and weight gain are achieved through the block’s 18 percent all-natural protein content and 13 ME, with essential trace elements, vitamins and minerals providing additional benefit.
The performance advantages offered by Rumevite Quality Lamb were also evidenced in a 2018 trial, in which lambs supplemented with the products had an average daily liveweight gain over double that of the control group and were finished 81 days quicker, with a 390g heavier finishing weight.
Regardless of the method of supplementation, a yeast fermentation product like Celmanax will provide sheep producers with the benefit of getting lambs off farm faster.
“Being able to maximise homegrown forages will be the most cost-effective way to get lambs to finishing and off the farm earlier,” Dr Bond concluded.
