0
Axcelera-P is AB Neo's first Accelerator for pigs, where each piglet typically only consumes up to 200g from day 4 and through the first few weeks resulting in finishing pigs heavier or earlier. Accelerators are products that when delivered to the gut in neonates, are proven to take animal performance to a higher trajectory than could be achieved using conventional best practice. As a result, they accelerate the performance of animals above their peers.
A combination of academic (Leeds University, Harper Adams University) and commercial trials have proven the concept of Axcelera-P. The data show that there are 3 fundamental benefits:
- An improvement in lifetime performance - reaching slaughter 4 days earlier or 4kgs heavier.
- Reduced pre-weaning mortality - proving to be very effective with hyperprolific sows.
- Improved uniformity of pigs at weaning.
Paul Toplis, AB Neo's Technical Director for Swine says, "It's best not to think of Accelerators in terms of offering a better feed or a new diet. That is what makes them such a breakthrough. Accelerators such as Axcelera-P have ’non-feed’ features in how they perform and are produced. They use a proprietary formulation and a new production technology to activate specific ingredients that create a novel effect whose performance is greater than the parts".
Paul Toplis says, "In pigs, over the past 20 years, the feed industry has made continuous and incremental improvements in post-weaning diets or starter feeds. It's amazing to see the progress we have made when we compare the performance of a leading starter feed from 20 years ago with a current leading starter feed formulation.
However, when considering the progress of pre-weaning or neonate diets over the same period, the industry has experienced frustrations and failures with limited success in delivering significant performance improvements.
Conventionally, pig farmers have looked for an increase in feed intake and an increase in weaning weight as an indicator of progress in the area of neonate nutrition. By being obsessed with just feed intake, you could say we've been looking in the wrong place for 20 years.
After many years of trying to research ways of exploiting compensatory or catch up growth we have realised that it just cannot be done predictably in a commercial situation. That’s when we discovered 'Accelerators' that work in a completely different way. This discovery confirms that the most profitable way of producing farm animals is through fast growth throughout their whole life.
With Accelerators, pre-weaning feed intake is no longer the measure - it's about switching on and preparing the gut. The animal's gut is the delivery organ for feed efficiency and for a lean, fast growing animal. Accelerators act by turning on the gut as the delivery system.
One particular feature of Accelerators is that little effect is seen until after the weaning phase, after which the performance is accelerated throughout the animal's whole life. This may involve turning genes on or off to directly improve transporter systems or through the changed microbiota to open up high performing metabolic pathways. It's as though the switch has been turned on in the neonate to boost post weaning and lifetime performance.
This is an area of our ongoing research where we hope to define the precise mechanisms behind the positive lifetime impact".
The commercial impact of the research data is already borne out by pig farms in UK and Europe already using Axcelera-P. Having trialled it, they continue using it as they can see at first hand the commercial benefits.
November 3, 2014 - AB Neo
