Calfcare - prebiotic calf food for better returns from calves

CALFCARE™ - PREBIOTIC CALF FOOD
FOR BETTER RETURNS FROM CALVES
- HOW DOES IT WORK?

Calfcare is a new generation prebiotic that helps to increase weight gain, improve appearance condition and general health, reduce infective disease and reduce feed costs of newborn calves.

Calfcare is a complex carbohydrate which helps to stabilize and increase the natural microbial populations of essential bacteria in the digestive tract of newborn calves. These bacteria produce short chain fatty acids which are essential for growth and which help to protect the animal from sickness and to adapt to its environment.

Better performance of the digestive system results in less diarrhoea, better immune response, reduced fatalities and improved feed conversion efficiency. That all contributes to better productivity, lower costs and increased profitability.

Foods which provide a physiological benefit as well as a nutritional outcome are called prebiotics and are at the leading edge of the advances in bioscience. Prebiotics enable animal health and welfare to move away from cure to prevention.
Biotechnology has started to provide products which preserve the environment, promote renewal, increase health, and which are bio and eco safe.

Prebiotics are non digestible carbohydrates which are now used in agriculture to reduce infection and disease, reduce feed costs, increase the health appearance and condition of animals and increase natural production.

Modern production methods extract and concentrate prebiotic carbohydrates from plant sources so they can be added to animal diets in a safe non toxic easy to use way.

All living mammals are built up from the same basic materials, they function in very similar ways and are controlled by the same biochemical reactions.

One of the key processes of the living body is the digestive system. It is the food conversion and distribution unit which supplies all the nutrients the body needs to grow and function. If this system is run down then the animal has to devote more of its energy to repair and rebuild instead of natural production.

A digestive system is usually made up of three separate food process systems - acid, enzyme and fermentation. The fermentation system produces natural antibiotics, detoxifying and cell repair agents and has a profound effect on how well the body functions. Some of the production of these agents takes place in the lower digestive tract.

The health of the lower digestive tract is often overlooked but its dysfunction results in many avoidable animal health problems. These include high mortality rates in newborns, lower growth rates, reduced levels of production, increased risk of infection and disease and feed inefficiencies.

When food material enters the lower digestive tract it is fermented by specific carbohydrate reducing bacteria. The biochemicals that are produced by saccharolytic fermentation include natural antibiotics, detoxifying and cell repair and immune response agents.

These carbohydrate reducing bacteria can be greatly reduced by stress or sickness and the lower digestive tract becomes overpopulated by pathogenic bacteria such as listeria, E.coli or salmonella. These bacteria ferment any protein present and produce toxic biochemicals usually phenols, amines and ammonia.

Prebiotics help the animal restore its digestive process back in favour of saccharolytic fermentation. An improvement in health, well being, feed efficiency and natural production are the outcomes of better digestive function. Toxic bacteria are purged from the digestive tract by a process called competitive exclusion.

As other farming economies continue to make gains on New Zealands traditional advantages we need to adopt new technologies which restore the balance back in our favour